


Memories, Mirrors, and...Mom

by TempusNoKitsune



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Angsty Crowley (Good Omens), Anxious Aziraphale (Good Omens), Aziraphale is Bad at Feelings (Good Omens), Caring Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley Created the Stars (Good Omens), Crowley Was Raphael Before He Fell (Good Omens), Crowley Whump (Good Omens), Crowley is Bad at Being a Demon (Good Omens), Crowley is Bad at Feelings (Good Omens), Crowley is a Mess (Good Omens), Crowley-centric (Good Omens), Forbidden Love, God Ships Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), God is cool, Hurt Crowley, M/M, Multi, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Oblivious, Other, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, She never stopped loving him, Unrequited Love, god loves crowley, it's complicated - Freeform, or any of the other Demons, post-armageddon't, rating may go up?, there is some, this is going to be complicated probably
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-24
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2020-09-25 23:21:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 28,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20379799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TempusNoKitsune/pseuds/TempusNoKitsune
Summary: Crowley starts seeing his angel form in the mirror. It starts as a walk-by glance and suddenly disappears. He doesn't know what to do with it, all of those memories were taken away, but they come back to him in pieces, digging up all sorts of things.Then God appears to him of all people. She says that she forgives him, that she had forgiven him long ago, and that she never stopped loving him. She says that he and Aziraphale are to be the protectors of Earth as they have been for her so far.Everything hurts, and nothing makes sense- so just another new millennia really.





	1. Mirror Mirror

**Author's Note:**

> Get ready for a deluge of headcannons, angst, fluff, slow-burning, and complications.

It catches him more than off guard, the first time that it happens. He thinks that it's fair, no one really expects to see their old self in the mirror. To re-live so tangibly the echo of what they had once been. It's jarring enough that he back tracks instantly. Crowley's not one to spend much time in front of a mirror unless he's dressing or fixing his hair. He avoids his eyes ruthlessly when he does, as eyes are the windows to a soul he doesn't have, after all.

So yes, when he briefly walks past the mirror in his walk in closet he wants to jump out of his skin at his own appearance. Something like cold chills him from the inside out as emerald green eyes stare back at him from the reflective glass. His hair is long, almost halfway down his back, there's a gentle green and gold brightness around his head and his face is speckled with the proof of his creations. Bright gold constellations against a swirling backdrop of endless space. His mirror image tilts its head, ringlets of copper hair spilling over a white tunic. It's an image from millennia ago- millennia that he only retains bits and pieces of memories from. One he didn't often see- no need for mirror in heaven, of course.

He suddenly feels as though he can't breathe, a weight in his chest that rivals losing the feeling of Her love all over again. He stumbles back tripping over his own feet and crashing to the floor as he blinks back the stinging heat behind his eyes. When he looks up once again all he sees is himself. Amber serpent eyes set into a thin face, framed by a twisting tattoo and flaming cropped hair. He breathes in and out shakily for an indeterminate amount of time before standing back up and straightening himself out.

He'd been having those nightmares about his fall again, this must just be an extension of that. Crowley blows out a long sigh, suddenly both very tired and angry with his own brain for betraying him like this. He doesn't allow himself to dwell long, he's got a lunch date to make.

Sliding into the Bentley is enough to snap him out of the odd funk that the little mirror debacle had put him in. Almost immediately, “I want to break free” begins to blast from the speakers and he doesn’t even try to hide the quirk to his lips as he peels out of his parking space. There’s a fairly new sushi place over between Belgravia and Westminster that he’d suggested as a new food place to Aziraphale a couple of nights ago. The angel had lit up so quickly that Crowley couldn’t help but preen a bit at the waves of happiness radiated off of the blonde as he gives an excited little wiggle in his seat. 

There’s no parking spots nearby, of course, until Crowley manifests one in the adjacent alleyway with a broad enough space that if there’s even so much as a scratch on his car then he’ll have no choice but to find them and kill them for going out of their way to bang up his baby. The restaurant is a cute little hole in the wall that doesn’t technically take reservations...for normal people anyway.

He’s there early, which isn’t really his style, but it’s better than staying at home any longer than absolutley necessary in this particular situation. He takes over a little space in front of one of the wide windows facing the street so that they can people watch, and goes ahead and orders a large hot sake. There’s something relaxingly lethargic about watching humans go about their day while letting the hot rice liquor burn down his throat. 

“Crowley!” Aziraphale titters as he walks up to the table. Crowley lets his mouth quirk just a bit as he takes in his angels nicely pressed suit and bright, shining smile. “This place is absolutely lovely.”

He gives a little nod and pushes out the open chair next to him with his foot, scooching it far enough away from the table so that Aziraphale can easily sit down.

“Glad you approve so far, angel.” He pours out another shot of sake. “Ordered you a tea and the poke appetizer.” 

Aziraphale smiles at him and gives a little clap as the waiter brings over the starting dish just on time. It’s easy to slip into their comfortable routine of idle conversation. The blonde radiates his gentle divine energy as Crowley watches him savour his meal. There’s nothing quite like watching Aziraphale eat, the genuine joy and satisfaction that comes from his low level indulgence. He goes on about a new book deal that he’s working out with the grandchild of another collector, his hands moving about energetically in between bites. Everything else melts away and Crowley feels himself drift back to normal.

“Mmmmm.” Aziraphale hums happily upon finishing his meal and green tea cake. “That was wonderful, this was a great find, dear!”

“I’m glad it lived up to the place you love in Soho.”

The angel nods, “It’s always so exciting to find new places like this. I  _ was _ so dissapointed when that little Asian fusion place in Mayfair closed down.”

Crowley hums lowly and watches as Aziraphale gives his tiny dessert spoon a little extra lick before setting it down. His own tongue flicks out momentarily, and he clenches his jaw when he realises what’s happened and waves down the waiter in a semi-desperate attempt at a distraction. For all that Aziraphale is insanely intelligent, he’s not always the most perceptive of beings. 

“Do you have anything else planned for today, dear?”

Crowley blinks as he sets the cash in the small folder and stands. “Not really, no. Why? You have something you want to do?”

The blonde bites down gently on the inside of his lips, which is a definite yes that’s followed by a, ‘I’m not really sure if Crowley would like this, but I still want to ask him’. It’s almost unbearably endearing. 

Crowley pulls Aziraphale’s chair back a bit and pushes it back in once he’s stood up. He leads the way to the Bentley in a practiced trail, opening the door for the angel as he’s wont to do. 

“Yes, well-” He starts, pausing as Crowley walks around to the drivers side. “They’ve switched out the art in the queen’s gallery and I was rather hoping...that you might consider accompanying me?”

Crowley finds himself slowing down considerably at the question. They have been spending more casual time with one another since the not-apocalypse, but hearing that his company is wanted is still something that he’s going to have to get used to in the coming years. He’s still going 20 over the limit, but it's a fair amount lower than usual and they pull up in his “special spot” -read: only in existence when he’s there- outside of the bookshop.

Aziraphale beats him to the door, walking with a thinly veiled anxious energy. Crowley shakes his head at himself and follows up behind, making sure that the sign is flipped to closed before locking the door behind them. 

“You want me to go to the gallery with you?”

The angel flutters about, moving into the back room where they usually take their night caps before popping his head back out.

“Tea?”

“Hm, sure.” He saunters back to the lounging couch and plops down heavily.

Aziraphale could very easily just miracle up some tea or hot water at the very least, but they’re both fairly used to keeping the miracles to a minimum and Crowley figures that it’s not unlikely that doing little things like this the human way is comforting to the angel as much as it is to him. Though, it’s taking awfully long to just be putting a pot of water on the stove.

“Angel?”

“Yes!” There’s a little crash, things being knocked over and a soft swearing -if one could count words like “oh goodness” as cursing-, “Yes?”

A curly blonde head pops around the corner, cheeks flushed and rosy and baby blues looking in the space around his head.

“Are you okay?”

“I-” He takes a little breath and moves to his usual chair just off to Crowley’s side. “Yes, I’m…”

He lifts an eyebrow. Aziraphale is a finicky and nervous creature in the best of times, but not often around him, and certainly not for no reason. 

The angel sighs. “Truth be told I was just a bit nervous about asking you to go with me to the gallery. It’s silly really…”

Crowley’s eyebrows drop and he resists the minute urge to take off his glasses and look the other in the eye.

“Why in the  _ world  _ would you be nervous to ask me anything?”

Aziraphale throws his hands down in his lap. “Oh, I don’t know!”

Crowley shakes his head. “I’ll go with you, if that’s what you were worried about.”

There’s a short pause where Aziraphale has his mouth open like he was ready to rebuttal to whatever the Crowley in his head had said, but ends up back tracking. Crowley expected more of a happy look here, less of a concerned and uncomfortable one.

“You will?”

“Yeah, of course.” It’s no skin off his teeth. Contrary to what may be popular belief based on his persona, Crowley loves museums and art galleries. He likes things that engage his mind and take up time. He’s gotten rather adept at what humans call art history and he’s found that he gets small tastes of joy from it.

They sit in relative silence, more uncomfortable than it usually ever is, until the kettle starts to whistle. Crowley shifts after Aziraphale gets up and rubs a hand over his face. Things are different now. Not as much as he thought they’d be, but still different. Somehow, in this short amount of time he’s done something to set the angel off enough for things to become tense- he hasn’t got a clue what.

He’s usually great at reading people but, of course, Aziraphale is not people. Never has been, and never will be. That doesn't make it any better to think about though, and is certainly unhelpful to a T. He’s not left alone with his thoughts for very long before a cup of black tea is set in front of him- three sugars, no cream. 

Crowley mutters out a soft thanks and picks up the cup only to almost immediately drop it in his lap. In that moment of lifting the cup he caught his reflection which stared back still with glasses, but with long hair and sparkling cheeks. He lets out a startled hiss though the hot liquid hardly bothers him, familiarity with hellfire and all that. 

“Oh my!” Aziraphale is up and over by him in an instant, grabbing the cup, patting at him with a far too tiny napkin and fussing at his clothes as he tries to do damage control for something that has nothing at all to do with the tea itself. 

“Zira-” He writhes a bit, uncomfortable as the angel unintentionally boxes him in, “Azira-zira! Zira! Zira, stop!”

Aziraphale freezes and pulls back. “I’m sorry, I-”

Crowley shakes his head and lifts up his hands. He’s unsure of what he really intended to do originally, maybe lift up his palms in stop and surrender, but he ends up grabbing Aziraphale’s arms as they hover in front of him.

“Crowley?”

He has this awful feeling of wanting to cry. He want’s to cry and yell and pull himself out of his skin for nothing more than a glimpse of something that he once was. Crying is not an option. Coming apart is not an option. 

He tries to remember that thing that he had read during the little mental health kick he had sometime in the mid 2010’s- long breaths in through the nose and out through the mouth. It’s surprisingly effective at re-grounding him, and when he squeezes his hands he nearly jumps out of his skin at feeling Aziraphale’s arms still underneath them. Big blue eyes are staring at him, shining with concern as he drops the angel’s arm away.

“C-”

“Sorry about that.” He buts in. This doesn’t need to be a thing, and if Aziraphale gets enough breathing space it will become one. “Just a little shock is all, hotter than I thought!”

He tilts up his mouth in an unconvincing mockery of the smarmy smile he’s perfected.

Aziraphale’s eyes narrow uncharacteristically and he fixes Crowley with a look as he continues to ramble on aimlessly in hope of distracting away the issue. It only takes a couple of minutes of blabbering for Aziraphale to soften and gracefully let go of the matter, for now at least. Crowley can’t exactly hide his relief, but they're able to get on with a relatively normal afternoon of lazing about with the angel reading aloud after the mess has been miracled away. 

He’s slowly able to relax as though nothing was out of the ordinary. The couch in the back of Aziraphale’s shop has served him well over the years, and it doesn’t fail him now as he allows himself to slouch down into the old fluffy down cushions, glasses slipping down the bridge of his nose as his eyes closed to the gentle melody of a soft male-toned voice he’s found comfort in through the ages. 

The next thing he knows he’s blinking blearily in early daylight with a large, soft, afghan tucked up closely underneath his chin. There’s the soft scent of mint tea and buttered scones wafting through the back room, complete with a soft and slightly off humming. He lets out a garbled inhuman noise as he twists his body around to bring feeling and function back into his limbs. 

“Good morning, dear!” A light voice calls back to him. He swears that he can see the shining golden light on the words as they make their way back to him. 

“Mmnf.”

The afghan pools around his waist and he shudders and shifts his shoulders so that his jacket sits back up higher and curtains over his body. He doesn’t even remember falling asleep, but one does tend to get the best sleeps whence they fall asleep unknowingly. One also tends to miss things and people and appointments...and centuries. 

“Wha-nah...wha’ time issit?” He mumbles out, fairly quietly really, but given the fact that Aziraphale is more than familiar with a sleepy Crowley, there’s no surprise at all when a prompt answer is thrown back at him.

“About 8 in the morning!” 

8 in the morning...the next morning. As in, Crowley fell asleep yesterday afternoon and stayed that way until now. Centuries indeed…He really ought to work on control of that somehow. 

“Sorry about falling asleep, angel.”

A head of fluffy blonde hair, soft and shiny like new down feathers, comes around the corner. The platinum locks catch the light and if Crowley didn’t know that Aziraphale was an angel, he would have known then with the warm halo that clung to his head. Crowley knows that he’s staring, his mouth slightly open, but not enough to make him a living fly trap.

“Nothing to be sorry about, my dear. You must have been tired, and I certainly don’t mind you having a kip on the sofa.” The angel says with a toothy smile.

Crowley makes a humming noise and picks himself up, wincing a bit as pins and needles go up and down his legs. He needs to go back to his flat, water his plants, yell at them a bit, sort any of his useless mail, but-

“Care for breakfast, angel?”

“Oh?” Aziraphale’s body turns towards him fully, and he’s glad that he had his glasses on because it’s always a bit too much to have the angel’s full attention on him. Like he’s really, really worth it. Crowley smiles lopsidedly.

“That little place in Mayfair?”

“Oh! The one with the french toast?”

“The very same.”

“Well, what are we waiting for?”


	2. Art Date

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crowley makes good on his gallery visit agreement...

Crowley glares at the bamboo. It’s not indigenous here, the climate is all wrong, but he’ll be damned (forgoing the fact that he already is, it’s a metaphor, lay off) if that’s going to keep it from growing properly in his plant room. The reeds straighten from the lean-to state and he drags his fingers over the finely ridged bark. They’re a gentle green, and they haven’t browned yet, so they’re in the clear for now.

He turns, dropping off the misting bottle on a neat little glass table that he’s fashioned by one of the floor-to-ceiling windows. The flat is lit completely by natural light at this time of day. Crowley has no reason to save money by keeping off the lights, but there’s something about the serene lighting of the sun that both bounces off the stark walls and floors, and heats the open rooms to a perfect greenhouse state that leaves him feeling an odd sort of satisfied. He chalks it up to his snake-like nature and goes to plop himself down into his throne. It’s more than easy to lift his feet onto the leather surface of his desk, the heels of snake skin boots making a very specific clacking sound. He smirks to himself at the shoes- yesterday was a lazy day, a miracle clothing day, which means-

A little sub-dimensional shifting and the boots show their true state, scales molded to human shaped feet in a way that looks odd given his corporation, but are none-the-less his very own rather than faux or those of some unfortunate distant cousin or some other. He wiggles his toes, nose scrunching up at the odd slipping feeling, but not doing anything to change it. 

He snaps on the T.V., letting it play through whatever, only half paying attention as he stares out the window. He’s watching a dreary looking wave of clouds begin to wash in when he remembers that he’d promised Aziraphale that they’d go to the art gallery yesterday, only to fall asleep on his couch after the Tea Incident. 

“Damn.” He hisses out. Only one thing to do for it. “Call Aziraphale.”

His phone knows better to disobey from it’s spot resting on the corner of the desk. It rings a couple of times and he taps his foot against the soft surface, enjoying that rain-like pitter-patter of his scales against it. 

“Hello, A.Z. Fell-”

“Angel, it’s me.”

“Crowley! How has your afternoon been?”

Crowley gives his head a slow shake, looking up to the sky in a mockery of a very serious silent plead that he’s made many times. 

"Just fine. Listen, how do you feel about going to that gallery in, oh say…" He shifts, head turning towards the idling T.V. where there's a little white number in the corner. "10 minutes? I'll pick you up, then dinner, wherever you want, my treat."

He can practically hear the angel blinking as he processes the offer and information. He hopes that there’s maybe a smile in there somewhere too, but shakes himself from the no good hope feeling. Demons  _ don’t  _ hope.

“That-that sounds wonderful, Crowley!”

Crowley nods to himself, of course it does. He’s good at planning. It’s one of his things. 

He hums lowly, “It’s a date then. See you soon, angel.” With that he hangs up rather abruptly. 

10 minutes gives him just about a fair amount of time to put on proper shoes, clean up and drive appropriately towards the bookshop, which means that he’ll be there early because he never drives appropriately. 

He leaves his feet scaly despite the chilled floors, the slight texture difference gives him a little foot massage that makes up enough for this shivers that go up his legs at the temperature difference. There’s a pair of nicely heeled leather boots in his closet and it’s rather easy to slip them on, since they’re soft as butter from a good amount of wear. 

Crowley shifts back on his feet and catches his reflection, straightening up only to see rough patches of correspondingly coloured scales all over his body. It’s an odd sight, the thick shiny areas broken up by the matte squishy human skin. His nose scrunches up at the bridge as he runs his hand back and forth over one of the spots, before willing the scales out and away out of existence. He’s just turning on his heel when his mirror image shifts from his own to the one that must be following him now around every corner. 

The face that looks back at him is his own, but so jarringly different that he still jumps despite having seen it before. This time he stands still and stares down the offending doppelganger. His reflection looks as unhappily stern as he is- a true mirror image but radiating the sort of soft angelic energy that almost makes it hard to look back at. 

This time he says what he thinks aloud.

“Is that me?” 

The mouth moves with his words, but his lips are softer and the harsh, hollow lines of his face are still more filled out and covered liberally in constellations. The very hand that was only moments ago rubbing over deceptively soft scales reached out and brushes over the glass surface before he can make a properly conscious choice. The cold deception breaks the sort of spell that comes over him. 

He shakes his head vigorously and shoots a rather useless glare upwards as he stomps out of his flat and down to the Bentley. 

“This isn’t funny. I don’t know what kind of sick kick you’re getting out of this, but I don’t want to be a part of it.” He slams into the door to the outside, reveling in the uncomfortable throb that it leaves in his shoulder. “Leave me out of your ineffable plans from now on.” He means to bite it out but his voice catches on something, wavering traitorously. He doesn’t have time to think about this. He won’t. He can’t. No, he has a bookshop to get to. An angel to pick up. “I can’t do this. I can’t just keep being a pawn...I…” 

Crowley bites his tongue and lifts his sunglasses to rub viciously at his eyes before they drop back down and he slides into the Bentley, very deliberately leaving those thoughts where he was standing before driving recklessly away towards Soho. 

His off mood has him entering the shop a bit more roughly than he usually would, but the tiny bell doesn’t seem to take it too hard. 

“Crowley?”

And like that, the heavy weight on his shoulders lifts just enough for him to stand up straighter and plaster the beginnings of a half-smile on his face.

“Ready to go, angel?”

Crowley leans back against the door frame as Aziraphale comes out from between a couple of bookshelves and goes to grab his coat from the rack near the front door. He raises his eyebrows at the blonde, but he’s paid no mind as the angel readies himself and shoots him a close eyed smile before opening the door for the two of them and standing by while the Bentley starts up in order to lock the door. 

Crowley grips the steering wheel for a moment and feels a bit of the tension in his body melt away when the wheel itself gives a little reassuring jolt.

“Thanks, beautiful.” He pats the wheel and gives his head a slight shake as Aziraphale gets in the passenger side. 

“I’m so glad that you wanted to do this! I’ve heard that they’ve gotten a Caravaggio and I’m absolutely dying to get a glance at it.”

Crowley glances over to the side, one eyebrow raised above the other. “Ah, yeah?”

“Oh yes! He was quite the visionary really-”

“Hm, creative visionary with a horrible temper. Killed a man if I remember correctly.” He taps his fingers in a staccato beat. “Made a lot of people angry, basing angels and saints on regular people. Strike of genius if you ask me- more realistic than anything else they’ve ever properly thought about stuff like that anyway.”

Aziraphale is looking at him rather blatantly, mouth slightly open as though he would have never expected to hear Crowley talk about an artist as though he properly knew anything about them. On the one hand Crowley thinks he ought to be a bit offended by that, on the other he’s fairly used to people thinking that he’s “uncultured.” Meanwhile, he doesn’t see anyone having been close friends with Leonardo and being rather fluent in reading backwards and upside down for it- but that’s neither here nor there. 

“All the best artists seem to be unpopular when they’re alive, hey? Guess that’s no surprise, nothing new anyway.”

“No I...I, em, suppose not.”

“Sometime remind me to take you to go see some Bernini sculptures by the way- not necessarily related, but speaking of well known artists. Talk about at man overshadowed. Everyone always gushing over Michelangelo and Rodin. Nothing against them- brilliant mind you, but Bernini-” He blows out a breath to emphasize his feelings on the matter and lets it trail off. 

He catches Aziraphale blinking quickly and resists the urge to smile at the mild befuddlement. Aziraphale is madly intelligent. A lot of people overlook that due to his softened looks and generally oblivious and innocent nature. The angel likely knows more about humanity than humanity will ever know about humanity. That is to say that 1) between the two of them Aziraphale would generally be seen as "the smart one" -though Crowley's the one with multiple degrees which is a well kept non-secret- and 2) even when he's caught unawares, he's generally quite quick to recover, bar any dramatics.

The ride is pretty smooth all the way there, up until Crowley realises that there's no parking for more than a block. He glares at the building and wishes he could see an answering shudder, and he very nearly miracles away one of the other cars near the gallery, but he knows that Aziraphale wouldn’t approve and it would likely sour the mood for the rest of the afternoon and night. So, he grips the wheel a bit harder than he really ought to and bites the bullet until they find an empty spot far enough away that he’s going to be going to be just a bit tetchy from sore feet later tonight. At least it’s not raining for once.

Crowley shoots an intimidating glare around the vicinity of the Bentley as people deign to stare at his baby. He’s preoccupied about that enough within the general vicinity of car that when Aziraphale bumps into his shoulder with a happy little hop in his step, he startles pretty badly.

“Oh, sorry dear! I didn’t mean to make you jump.”

Crowley shakes his head, a slight smile lighting his face without his permission as he controls himself enough to return with a little bump of his own. It makes Aziraphael turn his head, all of that soft joy focused just in his direction, and he has to look away, face forward as they come up on the gallery entrance. 

It’s a nice looking building. Old but not too old, and rather well taken care of. Then again, he remembers the angel saying something about the gallery being owned by the queen, which explains that fairly well. Explains the high ceilings and marble floors too. It’s really nice for a gallery- not that galleries aren’t generally nice, but this one definatley has a certain sort of pizazz that could be explained by familiarity with the royal family. 

He’s apparently too distracted by the opulent decoration of the building, because Aziraphale’s arm hooks around through his own, and tugs him up the stairs. Crowley finds himself tightening the hold of the crook of his arm, their shoulders and sides bumping, soft curls brushing the side of his jaw. It seems the distractions this evening are going to continue, but he doesn’t know if that’s really a bad thing or not- but he’s certainly not completely comfortable with the heat that rises to his cheeks. 

There’s a modern looking glass door separating a side gallery from the landing at the top of the stairs. It’s a bit out of place and opens up into an even  _ more _ out of place hall. Leather outfitted walls and dimmed golden lights letting off a soft but intense sort of ambiance that feeds into the artistic capabilities displayed in the pieces lining the halls.

Aziraphale does that little thing where his eyes open wide and he leans in towards the things that he’s interested in. Crowley allows the minute tugs to guide them all around the hall and adjacent halls. The angel starts a happy little wiggle each time that they stop in front of a piece that he particularly likes and Crowley finds that his mind and mouth begin to work together to feed out bits and pieces of relevant information to each piece that he recognizes, and when that fails, all about the artists.

He loses himself in that in a way that he only usually does with music and movies. Then he freezes, just freezes in his tracks. 

“Crowley?”

He blinks hard, eyes fogging over a bit as a strange burning sensation plays at the back of his eyes. 

“Crowley, dear?”

He swallows thickly and steps backward, forgetting that their arms are linked as the angel stays still whilst his foot catches on nothing but air and his arm slips away.

It’s an unfamiliar but yet familiar scene and he shakes his head and refocuses on it again. There’s an ethereal aura around one of the figures, in more than just oil paint. His ears are suddenly ringing, his throat dry, and his head hurting as though gripped in a vice.

Aziraphale steps towards him and the angelic energy radiating off of him makes Crowley stumble back until his back hits the empty wall behind him. The chill of the leather through the back of his dress jacket has jolt him back into himself, away from and out of the image. There’s a brightness in his core that chills him from the inside- it’s something that doesn’t happen to demons, they’re always hot at their core, it’s not a choice. The chill can only be caused by one thing that he can think of, only one...being. 

He pulls himself away from the cold with a heavy coughing fit.

Aziraphale pats his back gently, blue eyes shining with concern as Crowley hurries to wave him off despite the tears gathering in the corners of his eyes with the hoarse heaving coughs. The angel is terribly gentle when he guides Crowley outside, even as he’s still letting out little breathy coughs. 

“Sorry, sorry-” The word falls out of his mouth on repeat as Aziraphale leans him up against the cool outside wall and continues to rub his back as the fit ebbs away. He tearfully shoots a look up to the sky. Why? What? What was the point? Why that painting? Why now? Why-

“Forgive me, darling. We’ll come back for the car later.”

Crowley hardly has time to look over at the man shaped being before the blonde snaps his fingers and they’re suddenly in the bookshop. Crowley is sat in his favourite spot on the old fluffy couch and the angel is knelt in front of him with warm hands on either side of his face, tilting it so that as his glasses are pulled off and set on the low table, his eyes are forced to meet worried baby blues. 

“Oops?”


	3. Hide It...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aziraphale tries to get Crowley to let him help...

“Oops?” Aziraphale parrots. “Crowley, you went from being completely fine to closing off and acting strangely before you went about having a coughing fit. I’ve hardly ever seen you cough at all, at least not without purpose.”

Gentle fingers frame his chin, keeping their eyes in contact as much as possible, though Crowley wants terribly to look away.

“You don’t have to hide from me, you know that. If I can help you, please let me know, Crowley.” 

Crowley tries to smile, through it’s weak and probably looks more like a grimace than anything else.

“No, I’m okay ‘Ziraphale. It’s-”

“It was the painting-”

“It was nothing!” He snaps, leaning back suddenly to pull away from their point of contact as though its burned him. There’s a sudden sense of regret when he sees the hurt that takes over Aziraphale’s face. He softens his voice and tears his eyes away. “It was nothing, angel. I just had a...moment is all.”

Aziraphale opens his mouth, but doesn’t say anything. He’s sitting back on his heels, that forlorn sort of look on his face that has Crowley’s gut twisting in a way that he can’t even explain. It’s one thing to see that look on his angel’s face at all, and another thing completely to know that he’s the one to have put it there.

He brings his hands up and presses the balls of his palms into his eyes and grits his teeth.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to yell at you.”

“That painting was a Rembrandt, a religious one.” 

Sometimes Aziraphale just knows too much. Sometimes he notices just the things that Crowley really wishes he wouldn’t. He won’t deduce it, not what’s happening to him now. It’s more than unheard of. It’s just impossible. Not that She’d really listen to that. She decides impossible, makes impossible, voids impossible, is impossible.

Crowley only just keeps himself from letting out an almost hysterical laugh at that thought. 

“Did it have some sort of inscription in it? Some Enochian or some incantation? Did it hurt you? Was it warded?” The questions start to tumble out of the angel’s mouth in a rush. That big brain of his churning around all of the different potential options for what it could have been that had Crowley acting “odd.” 

“I didn’t catch the name of it, but I’m sure that I can find it from the layout and the broad subject matter. Then we can figure out what it was that set you off. Once we’ve done that we can-”

Crowley just shakes his head. “Angel, no. It doesn’t matter. Please, just drop it.”

“Crowley-”

“Please.” One of Aziraphale’s hands is poised in midair, and in a rare fit of need to use physical contact to console his angel, he grabs that hand in perhaps too tight of a grip. “I-I know okay. I’ll tell you sometime. Later okay? Right now, lets just- I dunno, have a glass of wine and pop out for a nibble or two...please.”

Crowley can read the inner struggle going through Aziraphale’s mind in that moment. He knows that Crowley doesn’t share easily, if at all. It’s more than difficult and rare for him to be open. Aziraphale is such a being of curiosity and interest, that leaving things be has always been hard for him to do. They just stare at one another for a bit- locked in a sort of battle of wills. Eventually it comes to a head and Aziraphale squints unhappily at him in a way that says that he’s terribly unhappy with what he’s about to do.

“For now, Crowley. But we  _ are _ talking about this later.”

Crowley scrunches up his face, but squeezes the angel’s hand none-the-less. It’s an unhappy agreement to say the least, but if Crowley is any good at anything it's avoiding things. 

In order to get up Aziaphale pushes forward and for a mere moment in time they’re just centimeters apart from each other’s faces. Inches is something they’re used to- personal space is something of a time related construct. Centimeters though...it’s the hot wet space in between one another’s faces that he’s dreamt about more times than he can count.  _ And he should not be thinking about that. _

Then Aziraphale stands and the moment is over. The angel gives his head a little shake, raising a hand to pinch at the bridge of his nose. 

“How about French?” Crowley offers. He leans backwards until he’s pressed against the back side cushions, and taps his feet against the floor in a quiet little patter as though to bring some sort of feeling to them again despite them not really falling asleep. He has poor circulation though, what can he say- it comes with the snake familiar territory unfortunately.

Aziraphale lets out a low humming noise that’s part agreement and part a tired sound. Crowley hates that, so much. It’s not that the angel isn’t allowed to be tired, or sad, or unsure. No, that’s...well, not alright, but it’s a normal thing. Crowley doesn’t particularly like that, but it’s the fact that it’s him that’s done it. He knows that he’s caused it. That it’s something that he’s done that’s putting that tired look on his angels face, the weary lines and tense muscles. 

Reguardless, they do go out for a sort-of snack. It’s a bit early to be called dinner, but too late to be called lunch. At least that means that it’s easy to get in without even having to use a miracle to get in anywhere. He takes Aziraphale to a little hole in the wall restaurant that he’d stumbled by one of those days doing miscellaneous chaotic deeds. It’s run by a French family, and they also run the little bakery just to the right. The two restaurants themselves are smaller than Crowley’s entire flat, but the ambiance is genuine and comfortable. 

The angel seems to lighten up as they walk in. Stress and worry melting away at least momentarily. 

“Oh, Crowley...I don’t know how it is that you find these places!”

He tries for a little smile as they’re seated, and orders a terribly expensive bottle of wine. “I get around, that’s all.”

A sweet smile lights Aziraphale’s face and Crowley is able to warm a bit on the inside. It’s so familiar and normal that it’s easy to let The Incident fall into the past enough that they go into routine. Crowley feels equal parts relieved and conflicted. But all that is for later, when he’s in his flat alone. He’ll figure it all out. Come up with a plan. Hide it away. 

He’s good at hiding. He’s good at plans. He’s...He’s not good...


	4. Who am I?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After a breif break from his "new" reflection, Crowley's sudden luck vanishes.

About a week goes by before anything really happens again. He’s been able to sleep, drink, and hang out with Aziraphale with no more repercussions for the last few days, and it’s been normal. After all, he’s quite the professional at avoiding things. However, when it comes to God things, there’s no way to run forever- see Armageddon. Crowley covered up the few mirrors that he had around the flat, save for the one mounted flush to the wall in the bathroom. Unfortunately, there are a lot more reflective surfaces than mirrors- which he really ought to have learned would still work after the tea issue. 

The plant room is nice and warm in the midday. He bought a little space heater for when the sun doesn’t come out, so every day essentially. That’s what you get for settling down in England when you plan on having a garden. He’s had decades of practice now though. 

Pristine green leaves quiver as he looks around at them, poised to strike if he sees anything out of place. They’ve been getting off a bit too easy lately since he’s been so preoccupied, but there hasn’t been anything to show for it- they just better not get used to it. He steps back to the centre of the room for a moment to take in everything in a broad motion before nodding to himself and moving to sink down into the small blanket pile he’s gradually made up down in front of the heater.

It's proximity to the window that does him in, the light playing through the glass just enough to mirror his image back at him. Only it’s not him. Not him  _ now _ , anyway.

It’s that version of him again. The almost painfully angelic one. Without his glasses on emerald eyes burn back at him with such liquid intensity that he blows out a breath and drops down into his little makeshift nest. Suddenly he’s so indescribably tired.

His reflection folds gracefully down to the ground at a delay, independent from his person.

“So, what do you want from me?” He asks aloud, scrunching up his face uncomfortably when his reflection’s mouth doesn’t move with his own.

He combs a hand roughly through his hair, and starts to scoot back in preparation to lean himself against the far wall whilst having a bit of a breakdown. It wasn’t an unusual occurrence, so he’s gotten a comfortable spot to shift into, but as he’s staring down at the ground beneath his hands, his own voice talks back to him from the reflection.

“To remind you.”

Crowley chokes on his own spit and his head snaps over to the side.

“Whu-huh? You-uh yuh- you-”

Mirror not-exactly-him blinks, mouth tilting up ever so slightly at the side. 

“Spoke on my own? Yes, I did.” 

“Who-wha why? Wh-what?”

“Do you know who I am?”

Crowley pushes himself back up, trying to regain his metaphorical footing. “You’re me, kind of.”

“Kind of?” Green eyes sparkle at him mischievously.

“You’re an angel.”

“Yes.”

He tries very hard not to look at his  _ own _ reflection like it’s dumb. “I’m a demon.” He says slowly in further explanation. 

“Yes.”

“...couldn’t be more different than that.”

His reflection hums. “Why?”

“What?”

“Why does that make you think we have to be different?” Crowley opens his mouth, but his reflection gives him no time to actually respond. “Because it doesn’t, not really, not completely. I suppose what I really should have asked is, do you remember who I am?”

There’s a profound sense of exasperation and exhaustion taking over him.

“What?”

“What’s my name, Crowley?”

He opens his mouth, but his voice fails him leaving just incoherent sputtering noises to fall from his lips. 

The reflection hums. “I didn’t think so.” There’s a pause whilst Crowley snaps his mouth shut. He really, desperately wants this to be a dream, but if he’s asleep he’s not sure how to forcefully wake himself up. “Would you like to know?”

“Not really.” He chokes out. 

His reflection raises its eyebrows. “Are you sure?”

_ No, but I’m also not completely sure if you’re just a figment of my imagination or if you’re actually, truly real.  _

“I am real, Crowley.”

“What the  _ fuck _ -”

His reflection actually laughs at that, rather than just continuing down it’s mildly amused path. 

“Same being, same mind. Like I said, we’re not really that different.” 

Crowley gives up just a bit, and stops even trying to hold himself up in a seated position, sprawling backwards onto the cool floor, mused hair brushing the wall. He wonders briefly if his reflection has to do the same or if it can just stay sitting up now on it’s own- independent of him.

“You asked me what I wanted from you, and I’m telling you. I want you to remember Crowley. To remember who you were Then.”

Crowley scrunches up his nose and blinks at the ceiling. “I take it back then. I don’t want to know what you want from me. In fact, I think I’d very much like to go back to before you ever showed up, if it’s all the same to you.”

“It’s not.” His reflection replies almost before he’s finished even saying anything. “You don’t really get to choose.”

He chokes for a moment then blows out a long sigh. Distantly he thinks that he should probably sit up and face this problem head on, but he really doesn’t want to. 

“Crowley,  _ do you remember who I am? _ ” 

He huffs forcefully and kind of wants to both laugh and cry. Instead he lifts his arms up over his head and fists his hands into his hair, letting out a wet sounding laugh. 

“No! And I don’t want to!”

“You need me to tell you then?”

“ _ No _ !” He growls out, moving to cover his ears like a child, trying to avoid what’s quickly becoming the inevitable. Only, it doesn’t work. It’s like invisible hands are pulling his wrists away, down to his sides. He makes an aborted, whiny noise, and wriggles uncomfortably as his body ceases to feel his own.

“I’m sorry.” His own voice says to him, and there’s a genuine undertone to it that makes him struggle harder against the invisible bonds- then something shifts and he gasps as the world shudders around him.

**RAPHAEL**

The room shakes with it. The whole flat does. He stares wide eyed at the ceiling as the raw, voluminous power of it washes over him, and suddenly it’s like he’s struck in his very core. Without really noticing, tears have begun to stream from his eyes and time becomes the mere construct that it often is. 

When he properly comes to, everything is dark. Would be pitch black if he weren’t in the city and if not for the faint glow of the space heater. His throat is dry and rough from broken sobbing and his face is red and raw from tears. When he sits up his reflection is like it usually is, but he can hardly bear to look at it for the heady rush of emotions that runs through his body. He’s shaking as he slowly stands up, and only just has enough energy to shuffle to his bedroom and deposit himself into his bed.


	5. The Painting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic now has art by the amazing Fish!  
Here on Twitter:
>
>> slides in with a fic rec and slides out<https://t.co/xugeiJAmO9>[#GoodOmens](https://twitter.com/hashtag/GoodOmens?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) [pic.twitter.com/wsR5XYhwPB](https://t.co/wsR5XYhwPB)
>> 
>> — evelyn 🦇 COMMISSIONS OPEN (@wow__then) [September 20, 2019](https://twitter.com/wow__then/status/1174849438612738048?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)

He groans into his pillow and tries to burrow further under the heavy black duvet that had become a veritable cocoon around him. His phone keeps ringing despite his obvious unhappiness with it. That means that it’s either Satan- extremely unlikely -or Aziraphale, which is actually a highly likely option. He doesn’t really want to answer, or talk to Aziraphale right now, or perhaps not even for a couple of years. He needs time to process. More time to sleep. More time to...to be. Maybe if he keeps sleeping none of this will have ever happened at all. Not that that’s ever worked before.

The ringing stops for a blessed moment, and then picks right up again about a minute later. Crowley groans again and rubs his face against the silk pillowcase before slapping his hand about on the side table until he’s able to blindly grasp his mobile. 

“-ullo?”

“Crowley? Are you alright, dear? You sound awful!”

“T’hnks ‘ngel.”

“I’m sorry, you know what I meant.”

“M’fine. What’s up?”

“Are you sure you’re quit well? You sound almost as though you have a cold.”

“Imma d’m’n c’nt getta cold.”

Aziraphale hums an unconvinced note over the line. “I was going to ask you if you’d like to meet for dinner again, but I think we’d better not.”

Crowley shakes his head before remembering that they’re talking on the phone. “No, no. Let’s have food…”

There’s a soft puff of air, a familiar sound of amusement coming from Aziraphale. “I don’t think so, dear boy. Although, perhaps I’ll come to you.”

“Wha-?”

The phone clicks off without warning, or maybe Crowley’s sleepy brain is still foggy enough that he simply dragged on into nothingness long enough for Aziraphale to feel comfortable hanging up the phone without being rude. Although, at this point in their relationship, and with all of the times that Crowley had unjustifiably hung up on him with no warning, it’s not entirely unlikely that the little bastard bit of the angel feels no guilt in just leaving him right off. 

Crowley blinks slowly, his eyelids are still sticking together and he feels altogether uncomfortably fuzzy. It’s not that he’s surprised by this given The Thing that he really doesn’t want to think about ever again -which is going to be impossible and probably lead to what is a mountingly inevitable mental breakdown. Truth be told, the broad description of what the angel got at with being sick isn’t all that far off from how he’s  _ physically _ feeling.

He tosses his phone somewhere. He’s not sure where it goes, but there’s a soft thud that means it’s got to have landed on rug, and he’ll find it later- or it’ll find him depending on how he’s feeling. The next step is actually removing himself from his comfortable nest. There’s a lot of muffled groaning as he more throws his body around than anything else. Crowley’s legs actually become more entangled in the silky sheets, but he’s already too tipped off the edge to really recover, and goes tumbling over onto the ground. 

To be honest, he already feels bad enough that the impact of his body hitting the floor hardly phases him aside from waking him up a good bit more than before. Crowley stares unhappily up at the ceiling for a moment before finally forcing himself up. He’s shaky at best and doesn’t even bother to throw the sheets back up on the bed from their jumbled pile. 

He drags his hand along the wall to the bathroom, and flips off the mirror as a precaution before looking and simply seeing his own overly pale face glaring straight back at him. He hisses unhappily, tongue slipping out in a thin snakey line and flicking back against his face. The air smells kind of stale and his nose scrunches up at the almost sour flavour. He stumbles on towards the shower, which he jacks right on up to the hottest setting. Drawback of being somewhat snake is that his body reacts rather keenly to temperature changes. That means that he’s almost always cold in one capacity or another- so scalding hot shower is a blessing in semi-short periods.

The water helps to clear away the last remnant of sleep and begin to clear his head and loosen his muscles. His hair flattens down to his head, dropping from its fluffed up height, to make him look not unlike a drowned red rat. The fringe hangs down into his eyes and he squeezes his eyes shut, and makes an unhappy groaning noise. He doesn’t actually have to clean himself, though he does have some properly luxurious sandalwood soaps sitting on a corner shelf. Any potential thought of soaping up is lost when the image of the painting from the gallery burns back in the darkness of his eyelids.

He wants to open his eyes, but the water is still pouring down him in rivulets, and there’s a disastrous and morbid desire to keep them closed and look on at the negative of the painting. It’s uncomfortably familiar, and hardly accurate at all. However, accuracy doesn’t necessarily matter to trauma when it comes down to it. 

Crowley hisses loudly to himself. Stupid Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, painting religious and biblical themes. Why the message of Tobit, of all things? The name is never mentioned. Not in the name of the piece, nor in the description at all, and it’s such an obscure story that Crowley would be deeply surprised if anyone now a days were to be familiar with it. 

_ The Archangel Raphael Leaving Tobias’ Family _ , painted 1637, not long after he’d met the man for the first time. One would think that speaking to a relatively introverted artist about a blessing that you really ought not to have been doing circa 382 anno domini, wouldn't really lead to anything. One would also think that the artist wouldn’t then connect your story to a passage in religious text and then make a demon into an angel that just so happened to actually be what he once was and- Crowley rubs viciously at his eyes until they hurt. This is too much to think about. He can’t- he just can’t. 

Once his eyes begin to sting with tears, whether from direct pain and pressure of his fists or emotional turmoil didn’t matter, he opens them against the onslaught of hot water and growls at himself. The stream shuts off on its own and he runs his hands roughly through his hair, pressing the water down and out of it at the same time, taking a sadistic joy in the low thrum of pain that comes with the harsh tug. He could miracle it dry as he steps out and wraps up in a fluffy towel, but he kind of wants to leave it flat and slick against his head in a sad physical mockery of his own mental state. He hates the way that it looks like this, all too stuffy and almost as though it’s thinning terribly, but that unhappiness is deserved, something that upsets him that he can control. 

He glares icily at his fogged up reflection but it ceases to change. Perhaps his angel self is holding off to allow him a brief reprieve after completely destroying his rather fragile mental state. Crowley hisses through his teeth and rubs himself down roughly, tossing the damp towel at the mirror before stomping maybe a tad too dramatically out of the bathroom and all the way to the closet. 

Despite his comfort and predisposition towards wearing a very particular mix of clothing that make for a nearly identical outfit from day to day, he does own a quite extensive wardrobe which he’s amassed over the years. He doesn’t tend to keep things for more than a century unless he particularly likes it, though. Right now he wants something so different that he can’t think about himself then or himself now, but that he can use the physical sensations of to take himself further out of his mind and disperse himself throughout his body. 

There’s a pair of slightly looser black jeans. They still hug his thighs but are more of a boot cut than a skinny, and are long enough to pool around his bare feet. He pulls a worn knit sweater over his head. It has a sort of braided mixed pattern to it, and the neck has stretched out enough to show just the tops of his collar bones. It’s a soft and comforting outfit that he’s only really worn when he knows he’s going to be lounging or napping the majority of the day, or if he’s experiencing something of a mental dip. It’s like a safety blanket, not that he would ever admit to or call it that. 

Crowley means to go out into the living space to sit and wait for whatever Aziraphale is planning, but somehow he ends up sprawled back on his bed, face smooshed unceremoniously on the plush duvet and wet hair chilling him as his eyes slowly slip closed once again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all of the wonderful feedback so far! I'm glad that people seem to be enjoying this so much-
> 
> Here's the painting that they saw at the gallery in case anyone is interested: The Archangel Leaving the Family Tobias'


	6. Waking up

He wakes rather suddenly with a sharp intake of breath, and pushes himself up on his forearms quickly enough to throw his head in a sort of whiplash. He makes an abortive groaning noise and stares wide eyed down at the black fabric beneath him, eyes catching on a flash of tan that’s terribly out of place.

“Crowley, dear, are you okay?”

His head snaps up, which is just another whiplash moment that he could probably do without. Crowley can’t remember what he’d been dreaming about, but all he can remember is that he’s terribly on edge now. Like he hasn’t properly shaken the dream away yet. 

“Aziraphale?” His voice comes out as something rough and raspy. Far more sleep ragged than it has any right to be for what he assumes was no more than less than half an hour. 

Crowley blinks very intentionally until he’s able to refocus his vision onto the angel perched on the edge of his bed. A soft hand comes to rest with it’s back pressed against his forehead. It’s a terribly human gesture, and something flutters in Crowley's chest at Aziraphale trying to check him for a fever like one would a human child or lover. 

“You don’t feel warm.”

“Nn-guh.” He shifts so that he can flip from his awkwardly tangled position to laying on his back with a proper view of Aziraphale. “Wouldn’t suppose so. Kinda cold in here.”

The blonde seems to consider that for a moment, and then his hand is pulled away, and Crowley wishes that he hadn’t said anything at all. 

“I suppose it is, yes.” 

There’s a pregnant pause,that to him, seems terribly uncomfortable. Crowley lifts up his hand and drops it more heavily than he intended to, over his eyes. Crowley, up to this point, worked incredibly hard to keep his vulnerable side as far away from Aziraphale as possible. It had worked too, and then the world had to go and try to end and everything went to absolute shit. 

Crowley presses his hand back against his eyes for a moment, until he can see those black little dots that usually take up your vision when you’re about to pass out or have looked at something particularly bright- sometimes he thinks that he gets them after looking at Aziraphale for too long, but that could just be a result of wearing his glasses and continuously forgetting to blink. He’s pretty sure he’s getting a headache now, which is the last thing he needs on top of everything else. 

If he had his eyes open, he’d have looked up towards the ceiling, but as it is he shoots up something that he will never admit is sort of a silent prayer.  _ Isn’t the mental and emotional trauma enough? Do you really have to let my body decide it’s dying as much as my sanity is?  _

If She were to respond he’s almost positive it would be with something like,  **YOUR BODY DECIDES THAT ON ITS OWN, IT’S SIMPLY YOUR REACTION TO THE TRAUMA. SOUNDS LIKE A PERSONAL PROBLEM TO ME.**

Maybe not, but Crowley thinks God’s got to have a wicked sense of humor and a penchant for wit and sarcasm, what with everything that’s happened even just to humanity. 

“Are you going to tell me?”

The question comes out of left field and Crowley moves his hand so that he can look over at the angel. Aziraphale isn’t looking back at him, but rather, is facing away towards the windows. 

“What?”

Now blue eyes turn on him, hard but concerned and screaming ‘you know what I’m talking about’. “You’re acting strangely, and you’re trying to  _ hide  _ it from me.”

Crowley’s mouth twists in a grimace. “M’not.”

“Stop that!” The angel barks out, his cheeks are beginning to pink which means that he’s starting to really  _ feel. _ “Don’t look me in the eyes and lie like that, Crowley! I’m worried about you, and I don’t want something to happen only to know that I didn’t do anything about it.”

This isn’t the sort of conversation that one can have laying down, so Crowley pushes himself up and leans heavily against the wall. He tries for a casual sprawl, but his muscles are tense. 

“Angel…”

Aziraphale’s shoulders hitch up a bit, but otherwise nothing is said. 

Crowley squeezes his eyes shut and blows out some air. He can’t just tell Aziraphale, it’s not that easy. This is so much more than anything they’ve ever dealt with. Well...the near apocalypse may still hold that particular title, but this is a close second and far more mentally taxing. Anyway, how do you tell your best friend that you’re seeing your old self, your  _ original  _ self, in almost every reflective surface that you come across?

“I-”

Aziraphale’s eyes flash, alight as he interrupts. “Yes you can, Crowley! I know you think you can’t, and I know you don’t want to, but if you’ve learned anything from knowing me these 6 millennia I would hope that you know I wouldn’t judge you.” 

There’s a mixture of frustrated anger and tearful hurt. He’s not terribly surprised that the angel knew what he was going to say, but seeing him so riled up leaves Crowley a bit stunned. 

The blonde shifts so that he’s sitting more comfortably facing Crowley. “I care about you, Crowley, and I can tell that something is hurting you...but I can’t even try to help unless you tell me.”

Crowley pulls in a shuddering breath, his chest is tight and his head is still aching. He can’t tell him, he can’t! It can’t just be that easy. He can’t bring the angel into this. Who knows how this is going to go? What if this destroys him? What if this is a sign of the coming Armageddon? The  _ real  _ Armageddon? He can’t- he can’t-

Crowley bites down on his tongue, only barely muffling something of a sob. 

Aziraphale’s eyebrows lift up slightly at the sound and he looks as though he desperately wants to touch Crowley, but he’s left in a sort of indecisive aborted movement. 

“I don’t know!” He bursts out. His eyes are burning now, and he’s closer to tears than Aziraphale has ever seen him, eyes unhidden unlike how they were in the bar after the bookshop had burned. “I don’t know what’s happening and you can’t do anything about it!”

“You don’t know that, Crowley.” The angel tries, gently. 

“I do, I  _ really  _ really do.”


	7. Telling the angel about...the angel

Aziraphale huffs, and it’s obvious that he’s frustrated but concerned enough still that it doesn’t take over his approach. 

“Well  _ I  _ don’t know, and even if I can’t we can figure out something together.”

If the angel keeps talking like that Crowley isn’t sure if he’s going to be able to keep the tears at bay. It’s not fair for him to be showing so many more cards in his hand. More so than either of them has ever shown before. 

“Angel…” He croaks.

“ _ Please  _ Crowley.”

He shakes his head but knows now that Aziraphale is not going to let this go. There’s this particular set to his shoulders and a hardness to his eyes that he’s gotten multiple times when he sets his mind so to something. He’d gotten that look on his face upon the discovery of the antichrist, and more recently in the face of a new set of manuscripts. 

Crowley knows that he can only hide things for so long, but to be honest, usually that amount of time was somewhere along centuries to millennia rather than only a handful of days. 

“I don’t know what to say, angel.” He hates how his voice wavers, but it’s all that he can do to keep it from cracking or dropping off completely. 

Aziraphale gives his head a little shake. “You don’t have to know what to say, just tell me the truth.”

He lets out a stuttering cough and tears his eyes away, refocusing them on his own fingers as they begin to pick at the sheet beneath him. If he has to say anything at all, if he’s  _ able  _ to say anything at all, he won’t be able to look at Aziraphale’s eyes when he does. He digs in the nails of one hand- if they were shifted to the points of his more demonic form the fabric would be sporting quite a few neat little holes -, and rubs the sheet between the pads of his fingers on the other. The different sensations help to ground him.

“You’re going to think I’m crazy.” He mutters, and starts to try and figure out how he can voice everything without making just an awful mess that requires even more explaining than he’s already going to have to do. He’s never really been the best with words on speaking terms. There’s a small part of him that briefly thinks about trying to persuade the angel to give him time to write out everything, but he knows that not only would Aziraphale not allow any further stalling, but that Crowley would never actually write anything and will it all to be forgotten.

“I...every time...you remember the day in the back of the bookshop, when you handed me my cup of tea and I dropped it all over myself? I-In my reflections, anywhere, just anywhere at all, I just...see myself-”

He can almost feel Aziraphale’s confusion rolling off of him and hurries to try and further explain what he means by that. Not that he just sees his reflection like any normal person, but that it’s skewed, abnormal, unnatural...celestial-

“But not as myself now, as myself  _ then _ ...as-as an angel.”

As soon as the word angel comes out of his mouth everything in the room seems to drop off. Unlike every other time where the quiet between them is infused with a sense of fondness and familiarity, now it is imbued with uncertainty and discomfort. The heavy emotion of concern is tampered with the thickest tension Crowley has ever felt.

“I know it’s me. It looks kind of like me, but it’s definitely an angel, and it won’t leave me alone! He’s everywhere I look and it’s not just a vision thing! I don’t know what She-”He spits out, discomfort and unhappiness spilling over into a familiar sort of anger as he looks up towards the heavens, “is trying to do, but I’m Goddamn tired of it!”

His eyes drop down of their own accord and catch Aziraphale’s without meaning to. He’s expecting something of an admonishment for his outburst, but instead he’s met with stormy eyes that have slightly glazed over with wetness. The angel puts a gentle hand on his knee and he jumps a bit.

“Why didn’t you tell me before?” Aziraphale asks softly.

“What?” He chokes. That’s one of the last things that he was expecting.

“Oh darling,” The angel chokes up a bit himself, thumb rubbing back and forth over the bony knob of Crowley’s knee while the wetness in his eyes wells up enough that Crowley’s panic is quickly becoming split between the issue at hand and freaking out over the fact that the angel is on the precipice of tears, “I can’t imagine how afraid you must be.”

“You-I…” Crowley makes a handful of noises that were at one point meant to be words but didn’t quite make it there on the way out of his mouth. “You believe me?”

The tearful gentleness gives way to offended outrage. “Of course I do! I don’t know what’s happening or why, but have I ever given you reason to make you think that I wouldn’t believe you?”

Crowley snaps his mouth shut, teeth clicking together uncomfortably. The answer to that is a pained but solid yes, not that Crowley would ever say that aloud. Unfortunately his silence speaks the unfortunate volumes and Aziraphale’s face falls though he tries to hide the cracks. This whole conversation is becoming a terrible case of whiplash between the two of them.

The angel swallows thickly and his voice wavers slightly as he speaks again. “Well-I...I do believe you, and I’m going to be here for you and we’re going to figure this out  _ together. _ ”

“Aziraphale-” Crowley starts, and the angel’s hand tightens briefly on his knee. His immediate reaction is to protest, to tell him all of the reasons why he can’t, to take back everything that he can. However, when he starts to shake his head his eyes catch on a bright patch of light in the windows. He freezes as a familiar red eyebrow arches at him, and green eyes judge him from the sidelines. He grits his teeth together, gearing up to rip his eyes away when the reflection opens it mouth. “No! Shut it! No speaking! Fuck you!”

Aziraphale’s grip tightens on his knee exponentially, and he whips his head back around to look into startled blue eyes. The angel’s mouth is open like he’s going to rebuttal and Crowley quickly realises that Aziraphale hasn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary and likely believes that the comment, despite being rather sudden, was directed towards him. 

“No I-” An unexpected sob sticks in his throat and he chokes it down. “It won’t leave me alone, angel! He’s bloody everywhere.”

“ _ You don’t need to be so dramatic. _ ” His voice, but not his voice at all, says back to him. 

Crowley’s hands fly up to clamp over his ears. “Leave me alone!”

He can feel Aziraphale’s own hands move up to his shoulders, but it feels like he’s got tunnel vision and he zeroes in on the angel’s eyes, grasping onto their concerned clarity like a lifeline. He’s probably saying something but not-Crowley’s voice is louder.

“ _ I’m not going to hurt you. _ ”

“But you are!”

“ _ No, you’re hurting yourself. _ ”

“Shut up!”

“ _ No. I want you to listen to me. _ ”

“No!”

“ _ Crowley- _ ”

“Shut up, SHUT-”

**BE QUIET.**

The glass shudders and Crowley’s concentration breaks as Azirphale looks quickly over to the windows. He’d heard that. There’s no doubt. Not with how his hands tighten, how he pulls Crowley instinctively closer. A loud celestial voice is nothing to laugh at. And then Crowley remembers very viscerally- six wings and a staff and bright and bright and bright and bright and  _ bright- _


	8. We should-

_ ...Crowley… _

_ Crowley. _

“Crowley!”

Crowley starts rather violently, blinking as he’s gently shaken by the shoulders. 

“Oh thank the Lord.” Aziraphale breathes out, pulling him in close until he’s tucked tightly against the angel’s chest.

“Aziraphale?” He blinks a few more times, eyes stinging. “Wha..what happened?”

Crowley and Aziraphale genuinely didn’t touch much aside from the odd placed hand or arm. Being held in tight against the angel’s chest is a new sensation, and a welcoming one. However, the reasoning for it is something that he’d really rather not have to deal with. 

Aziraphale shook his head and leaned back enough that Crowley could see his face, but didn’t let him go. “I’m not sure, but your eyes rolled back in your head and you just-” He cuts off suddenly and takes in a shudder-y little breath. Crowley then gets enough mind and control of himself to lift his arms and embrace Aziraphale back- if a bit awkwardly. “You were gone Crowley. For just a moment there was nothing. I was so scared-”

The angel’s eyes seem to unfocus and Crowley digs his fingers a bit more into the giving flesh of angel’s arms and back. “Angel, it’s okay, I’m right here.”

Blue eyes flicker back to him and the blonde slowly nods. 

“Fuck.” He breathes out. He’s pretty damn sure that hasn’t happened before, it’s just his luck that it would happen when Aziraphale was with him. Crowley pulls back with great effort, gently pushing the angel away by the shoulders. “I’m sorry, you should go.”

“Absolutley not!” Aziraphale pushes forward to him and snatches up his hands as though trying to make the point that even if Crowley won’t allow him to pull them close together, that he’ll still maintain some form of contact. Like maybe his angelic force could ward off the one swimming around Crowley’s foggy head. “I don’t care if I’m frightened, Crowley. I won’t leave you to fight this on your own. That was undoubtedly celestial! You could be destroyed!”

“What about you, angel? I won’t let you get hurt because of this!” He growls out, trying to rip his hands away. Aziraphale, however, has always been stronger than he let on, and doesn’t budge.

“Me? Crowley, I could have just lost you!” Soft hands squeeze his own to the point that his knuckles roll uncomfortably against one another. “Even if it was just for a moment, it was more than I am ever willing to give.”

Crowley’s mouth snaps shut from where it had opened in ready argument. The words settle over them like a heavy blanket and the grip on his hands slackens as the blue eyes across from him widen, obviously that was something that the angel hadn’t been expecting even from himself. 

“I-” He can’t make himself finish, in fact, he’s not sure he really had anything to actually say to begin with. Suddenly he can’t quite make his brain work, not that it’d been going full force beforehand, but with Aziraphale’s words any left over function completely screeched to a halt. 

What does that mean? Is it just that face value? They have been the only beings of their sort on the Earth consistantly for almost 6,008 years now, maybe it was a Stockholme Syndrome sort of thing? Did Aziraphale consider their friendship to me deep and meaningful? To tip over that precocious edge to something beyond-

“I’m sorry?” His mouth squeaks out with no permission from his whirling mind. 

Aziraphale shifts uncomfortably, but the grip on his hands returns a bit more sturdily than the loose hold that it had dropped off to. “I’m not leaving, and that’s that.”

“Right yeah-” He struggles as one part of him screams at him to shut up while the other is so deathly curious that it’s grating the words right out, “I got that bit.”

The angel huffs, breaking away his eye contact in an uncharacteristic show of abject uncertainty and discomfort. “This is not the best time to talk about this.” 

Crowley blinks very deliberately. “And a good time will be later when it or something worse happens again?”

Aziraphale gives a little wince and looks back at him with a familiar air of frustration. “A good time will be when you’ve not only just woken up from a celestially induced sleep, thank you.”

Crowley pulls something of a face at him. It’s not completely intentional, but it’s also not completely _ not _ intentional. 

“Crowley! Can you _ please _ be serious.”

“I am!” You just dropped a huge goddamn bomb on me, that may or may not actually mean something that I’m inferring it to mean, and if it does then I might just discorporate without any celestial help. 

“We need to figure this out. This is important!”

“You don’t need to tell me that! I think I would know!” 

Where the angel had been gearing up to shoot back, his face falls and he seems properly chastised upon being reminded that this is, in fact, Crowley’s issue. Not only that, but he’d graciously and begrudgingly told Aziraphale about it, so really the angel has been privy to something that Crowley would have normally just taken on himself. Not that he’s dealt with anything like this before.

Aziraphale takes a heavy and slow breath and Crowley can almost see the gears in his head tumbling and slowly speeding up to a steady and even chug. This usually is what leads to him getting _ ideas _. Often long winded, intricate ideas that Crowley either trips and falls on his face over, or ends up adding to with his own convoluted generations. However, this is a bit more of a serious situation. 

To be honest Crowley hadn’t particularly thought of this as a life threatening issue before now, but a celestial and demonic entity duking it out in one physical realm over one soul and corporation is maybe not the safest thing. Then again, if God had wanted to kill him, She probably would have done it long before now (and not unlikely in a more painful yet straightforward way). 

“Right.” Aziraphale starts, breaking through his own little mental conversation. It looks vaguely as though blue eyes are squinting up and reading a book tucked away into the aether. “Let’s start this over a bit, shall we?”

Crowley’s only able to get out a struggling, “uhhhh-” before he’s cut off. 

“You’re past angel form is somehow appearing to you, and is more than just a figment of your imagination or any sort of extention of your mind. It seems to me that perhaps you’ve noticed this becoming stronger and more frequent, and if the last hour is any indication there is quite an imposing celestial presence somewhere here that I don’t recognise.”

Crowley’s nose scrunches up as he runs over everything, mentally catching himself up. “Sounds about right, yeah.”

The angel nods, his lips pursing and face screwing up in that cute little thing he does when he’s thinking hard about something. “We need to figure out how to get rid of it.”

Crowley looks back down at his fingers where they’re still being gripped, a bit unforgivingly, by Aziraphale. He wiggles them a little just to see their skin move against one another, and despite the fact that Aziraphale is very much otherwise preoccupied now, his fingers squeeze down on Crowley’s own in a mindlessly reassuring gesture. 

“I don’t know if that’s gonna be possible, angel.”

“Don’t say that! You don’t know if that's the case! After all we’ve done, surely you can’t think that ridding ourselves of another celestial presence will be impossible.”

“Well, to be fair, last time we weren’t necessarily fighting against God Herself. In fact, I’m pretty sure that us ruining the apocalypse was something She was more than okay with or it’s likely we wouldn’t still exist.” 

“Well-”

“Besides, how do you really get rid of yourself without _ getting rid _ of yourself.”

“But Crowley, that’s not you! It’s an angel!”

Crowley can feel his face twitch at the comment. How many times has he thought the same thing. Looked in the mirror and seethed at his eyes and face and tattoo until the glass cracked and he could only just see hot, bitter tears in mismatched shards. 

He can’t help the bark of laughter that pushes its way out of his throat. “Yeah. Yeah, I know that. ‘Cause only one of us can be the angel, yeah?”

Crowley knows that his face probably looks unkind as he tips his head back up to look at the blonde sitting across from him. Blue eyes have widened enough that Crowley can see more of the whites of his eyes than he’s used to, and the familiar “shut up, right now, and don’t you dare stress him out or scare him off”, played in the back of his mind, but very suddenly he really didn’t want to listen. 

“There has to be an even push and pull, and infernal nature doesn’t just go away does it?” A biting snicker pushes past his teeth. “I’m not nice, I’ve never been nice, I can’t be nice, and I don’t- I _ don’t want to be nice, right!?” _

His shoulders have begun to hike up towards his ears, and he doesn’t need to see his eyes to know that they’ve bled gold. Aziraphale is just blinking at him with his own wide eyes, mouth slightly parted, when Crowley feels hands on his shoulders. 

He doesn’t really think about it much, he can’t, there’s so much repressed hurt and anger burning like hellfire beneath his skin. The angel yelps and pulls his hands back as Crowley’s nails become a bit too sharp and hands scale-slick-cold. 

The hands on his shoulders push down a bit more firmly, pressing them back into place. “_ Calm down, Crowley,” _and it’s his but not-his voice. It sends a cold chill through his boiling veins, and his anger simmers into something more fragile. 

_ I don’t want to calm down. _He thinks back to the voice. 

“_ You know this isn’t productive. _ ” It counters, and he shakes his head which has it clearing up enough to refocus on the angel sitting in front of him. He’s almost positive that Aziaphale’s moving lips are creating sound, but he can’t hear it over the sound of his own angel-voice. “ _ You don’t need to take this out on, Aziraphale. I know you don’t want to. _”

Crowley grits his teeth which are far more pointed than they had been only minutes ago. His canines are lengthened to fangs, though all of those surrounding teeth are also sharp and pointed, and his talon like nails scratch into his skull as he holds onto his head. 

Aziraphale reaches out to him, and his hands hover just in front of Crowley’s already covered shoulders, opening and closing a bit as it seems like he can’t quite decide what to do. It’s a common dilemma between the two of them and probably isn’t helped by their offs and ons in this conversation- and maybe because Crowley’s nails just bit into his skin when they lengthened in his gentle grip. 

“_ Why don’t you just listen to me now? I can make things better.” _

_ Like hell. _He thinks back, squeezing his eyes shut.

The voice hums. “_ If you won’t listen to me, I suppose I’ll just have to hand you all the way over to mother.” _

It takes Crowley a moment, but once the word “mother” properly sinks in his eyes fly open and he lets out a startled, “No!”

But, of course, what one wants, one does not always get. Especially when one is Crowley, and once again his vision blurs but this time fizzing out to blindingly white light.


	9. Hello Crowley

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did anyone order proper angst?  
No?  
Too bad.

There’s an odd sort of burning feeling that’s pressing in from his brain into the back of his eyes. His ears are ringing, and he feels as though an odd sort of numbing, tingling sensation is reaching all the way out to the ends of his fingertips and toes. 

Crowley’s eyes don’t really blink open, considering the fact that they weren’t ever closed, his vision more just comes slowly into focus. There’s not a whole lot to look at, being that the space is mostly white and gray, with a texture like cotton to it. It’s very similar to heaven, but with a warmer and a softer ambiance. Something welcoming, something-

Crowley shudders and whips around looking for something else there, or in this case, the big Someone. However, behind him there’s nothing than more glowing cloud like structures, which only stand to increase his uneasiness. He starts to feel the tingling feeling of being watched prickle on the back of his skull and raise gooseflesh on his arms, and his body begins to tremble nearly imperceptibly. Crowley lets out a long breath and slowly turns back around to straighten himself up, only to see a softly glowing figure that has him shifting back as much as his still sloppily sitting body will let him. 

The figure, whose glow slowly calms down enough that he can properly see what it is, just looks like the body of a middle-aged human woman. She’s smiling at him a bit lopsidedly and doesn’t look terribly unlike Julie Andrews- which is probably completely intentional and he has to appreciate the petty move despite himself. 

“Hello, Crowley.”

“Fucking, what?” He spits back. Maybe not the best thing to say to God upon seeing Her for the for the first time in millennia, but as good as any for a demon, he supposes. 

She just raises her eyebrows a bit, clearly unimpressed but amused. 

Crowley shuffles his feet up flat and pulls his knees in towards his chest. “Why the hell are you doing this? Why me?”

“Because you’re you.” She answers, and Crowley opens his mouth to shoot something scathing and probably incredibly stupid and mouthy back, but She cuts him off before he gets the chance. “I chose you for a reason, as I do most things.”

She takes a step forward, and even though She has what looks to be average looking legs, the distance between them is significantly lessened. She reaches a hand out towards him as though to touch his skin somewhere, but he purposefully shrinks back, letting his hands drop behind him to hold himself up. 

She purses Her lips but doesn’t push the contact, leaving the outstretched hand hovering. There’s a strong pull towards Her, the gaping hole that he had slowly come to ignore and fill in on his own was itching and fraying raw around the edges. It felt like Her love was reaching out towards him just as much as She was, and he had to grit his teeth to keep himself from leaning into it. Just the act of resisting makes his eyes burn and blur with unshed tears. 

“It’s been a long time, Crowley. You’ve been so good for me, even when I’ve done everything to make you want to push away from me.” Her smile widens a bit. “You’ve always been my little healer, just like I made you to be. That’s never changed.”

Crowley breathes in roughly and bites down on his tongue around something that would have sounded suspiciously like a sob. 

She moves her fingers in a renewal of the gesture of reaching out to him.

“You threw me out!” He yells, finally grating something out of his tight throat and forcing himself to look up at her even as angry hot tears begin to spill over and roll down his cheeks. 

She gives a little hum. “Yes, I did.”

He pushes away a bit more, scrabbling back not unlike a child trying to helplessly move away from a parent that’s upset them. 

“You can’t just- you can’t just-” Crowley’s voice breaks and cracks on his words as he starts to sob in earnest. 

She takes a much smaller step forward this time until She’s able to slowly move a hand into his hair, giving him plenty of time to move away. Crowley, despite himself, pushes into the touch like a needy cat and bites down on an over-loud cry. 

With that small permission She pulls him into a half embrace, his sitting stature enough to fit him comfortably against Her human form’s middle as She absently pets at him, allowing him to cry on Her.

“But I’m a demon! You ripped our grace away! Tore away your love and left us to the pits of hell to rot and die over and over and over-” He chokes off on a particularly loud and wet sob before muffling himself in the fabric of Her clothing. 

“I punished some of you, that’s true. Your brother was too far gone on himself, on the things that he believed to be true. He was angry and became a shadow of what he once was, tinged with something that was beginning to manipulate others and indoctrinate their thoughts. But some of you were unhappy. You had grown and changed from obedient little angels to creatures of developing free will. You didn’t belong in heaven anymore, and you were unfortunate enough to not belong at a time when an example had to be made.”

Crowley clenches and unclenches his fists. “I don’t-I don’t-”

She shushes him gently.

“You were too unsure, my Raphael. Unhappy with where and who you were, but you never gave up your ideals or curiosity. Even now.” She gently combs through his hair and brushes Her fingers over his temples. 

His vision becomes spotty behind his eyelids until he’s faced with a now familiar reflection of himself. Red curls spill messily over shoulders, frayed and dull without their normal stardust. Shimmering green eyes dart around quickly, and his body doesn’t shift all that far from the ground as he goes from tending to one hurt angel to another. There’s an odd sort of blood-like substance on his skin, and white and green robes. One of his hands is grasping a wooden staff hard enough that his knuckles are white, while the other is held in an odd configuration, middle and ring fingers pressed together and stretched away from the rest where gold and green tinted magic flows to the angels on the ground. 

It doesn’t look like Raphael is making a distinction between the angels fighting on heaven’s side and those fighting with Lucifer. He looks determined, if a bit distraught, and Crowley is sucker punched with waves of emotion. Of  _ his _ emotion. 

The vision flickers and then slips away. He tries to hold onto it, grasping at the thinning inky threads as they slither into darkness. Crowley chokes and sobs again. He remembers a little more. More about himself, about his...family, about what led up to the fall…

Sharpened teeth sink into his bottom lip as he whimpers into the fabric of his face is pressed into. 

“I want you to keep on doing what you do best, but I needed to tell you to do it. A lot of things have happened over a lot of time, and what better way to tell you then through yourself? You need to remember now, Crowley, and then you and my little guardian need to continue on as protectors of Earth.” 

His face scrunches up and he begins to shake his head back and forth before pulling away. “What?” He slurs out. 

Tears cascade down his cheeks as he squints up at Her. “Whadd’re you talking about?”

God lets him go, but keeps herself open and approachable. “I want you and Aziraphale to continue being the protectors of Earth.”

He pushes back more, getting a hold of himself as the emotions and thoughts begin to...cool down, in a way. Crowley’s normal standoffish and abrasive persona begins to shift over. “ _ Continue _ being the protectors of Earth? You can’t possibly ask me to believe that you planned for us to stay on Earth like we have, and to do everything that we have.”

She tilts Her head slightly at him. “No, I didn’t. You’re right.”

Crowley blinks hard. He really didn’t expect to be told that he was right by  _ God _ . 

“You two did that work on your own, and fell in love with humanity on your own.”

He opens his mouth to rebuttal that he has not, in fact, fallen in love with stupid, sad, childish and mean humanity, but he’s interrupted before he even gets the chance. 

“You became guardians of your own volition. I’m just here to make it official, and to provide you with some protection.”

“What does that mean?” He gives his head a rough shake. “Why couldn’t you have done this when we were going to be killed for-”

“I did help then. You got your prophecy, and you were the smart angels that you’ve always been.”

Crowley tries to temper his frustration, to tamp down all of the emotions and trauma that have been bubbling up and over the rim of a boiling pot inside of him. “I am  _ not _ an angel.”

God smiles at him, and if he didn’t know any better, he would say that Her eyes started to sparkle with something kind of mischievous. “Not exactly, no. You’re something new, now.”

Crowley pushes further away from Her with his feet and shakes his head. “Stop this, it isn’t funny.”

God sighs. “I’m not trying to make you upset, Crowley. I’m just telling you the truth. You are no longer a demon. As of now, both you and Aziraphale are your own breed.”

She steps back towards him and he finds that he can’t physically push or squirm away at all. She tilts his head up so that he will look at Her and it almost hurts to see the genuineness and love reflected there. 

“Think of yourselves as my Earth Angels. I haven’t been able to properly trust any other angels with the Earth, as such. They’ve never had the love for it that I hoped they would. But you two,” Her smile seems to grow a bit, “you know what it’s like. You love them like children and help them like children, but also let them make their own choices. You treat them the way they need, and I need you to keep doing that. They need people watching over them.”

“What about you? Aren’t you supposed to be the one doing that? Why don’t you just tell the other angels what to do? Why don’t you just talk to them? Or talk to the humans again?”

She rubs her thumb over his cheek. “You always asked so many questions, little star. I won’t answer everything, and won’t do everything. There’s a difference between helping and negating free will.”

He opens and closes his mouth a couple of times, but finds that he doesn’t have anything to say to that and lets his mouth close with an audible snap of his teeth. 

“You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to, but you and Aziraphale are no longer an angel and a demon, but two entities of new and unique rank. If you’d rather continue to think of yourself as occult that’s alright. You’re indeterminate more than anything else.” 

An almost hysterical laugh barks out of him. “So we’re cryptids?”

As soon as the question comes out he feels like an idiot, but She smiles lopsidedly.

“Something like that.”

Without any sort of warning Her corporation and the white space all around them begins to becomes distant and fuzzy, and the ringing sound from before comes back with a vengeance. It’s the sound that he’s come to associate with a TV from the 80s and 90s turning off and on. 

“Wait!” Crowley lurches forward and reaches out towards Her desperately despite himself. 

He feels another light touch to his hair and then everything slowly fades into the familiar surroundings of his own room. Or rather, fades into the view of the ceiling of his room. He’s so incredibly disoriented that he can’t even properly tell where all of his limbs are, or that his cheeks are wet with tears for a few minutes. The ringing noise is soon to fade out as he’s able to move again, and gives way to a sort of muffled snuffling noise. 

It takes him a moment to get hold of his mental faculties, but once he has, that awareness paired with the ability to properly feel his body again, alerts him to the fact that the snuffling is coming from the warm pressure on his chest and down the side of his body. Crowley lifts the hand that isn’t squished against his body and drops it gently on Aziraphale’s back. 

The angel starts violently.


	10. Not my idea!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to the author can't help but write slow burns, as we are now approx. 16-17,000 words in and they are still not quite dealing with the issue and most definitely haven't admitted any sort of feelings.  
To be fair, it's not my fault that they're dumb and emotionally constipated. God is the only one with any brain cells here.

Crowley didn’t expect anything upon touching Aziraphale. He wasn’t exactly thinking much, brain being rather tied up with the whole just having talked to God thing. So, when an angel sits up above him, red faced and puffy eyed, and slaps him right across the face he doesn’t think he can really be blamed for maybe making things worse by yelling... 

“What-!”

Aziraphale makes a wounded sound in the back of his throat and a horrible fat tear rolls down his face. Crowley doesn’t get any time to even reach up and brush the tear away before the angel dives back down and hugs him tightly, tucking his face into Crowley’s neck. He’s so terribly out of his depth that despite his cheek still stinging he just wraps his arms around Aziraphale and blinks up at the ceiling. 

“Angel,” He starts softly, afraid to speak too loudly, “Are you okay?”

Aziraphale gives a little choked sniffle and makes some motion with his head, but all Crowley can tell is that tight golden curls are brushing gently against his chin and just at his mouth as well as baby soft skin against his neck. He awkwardly tries to rub little circles into the angel’s back.

It’s a minute or so before there’s any further movement, but eventually Aziraphale lifts up enough to look back into Crowley’s face. He looks slightly better than before, but that’s not saying much. Honestly, he looks like he’s been hit by a truck, a feeling and look that Crowley, himself, is familiar with. 

“Uh, hey.” He tries, mouth unable to decide between it’s normal scowl, and a comforting smile. 

For a split second he thinks that Aziraphale might slap him again, but instead his lip wobbles. The angel’s hands shift and fist harshly into his shirt, if he were to grip any harder Crowley has no doubt that his fingers would dig through the knitting to make perfect little holes in the fabric.

Crowley makes a couple of word shaped noises before settling on, “It’s okay.”

“Okay?” Aziraphale parrots, his voice rough and deeper than usual. “Okay? Okay?!”

“Uhhhh-”

“This is the furthest thing from okay!” Blue eyes sparkle with a new sheen of unshed tears.

“Angel-”

“I’ve only just gotten to keep you, I can’t lose you, Crowley! I can’t!” Aziraphale gives a little hiccup. “I-you-” The words die off as Aziraphale closes his eyes and takes a deep breath to compose himself, a single tear trailing down his cheek. 

Without really thinking about it Crowley reaches up to wipe the tear away, and blue eyes flutter open as his hand cups Aziraphale’s face. The angel’s head tips to lean into his palm and another tear spills over.

“It’s...I mean,” Crowley tries to piece together to say about his little heart to heart with God, “It will be okay-er...now. I promise.” 

“Crowley, you don’t have to lie to me to make me feel better. We...I-”

Crowley shakes his head. “I’m not, Aziraphale. I still don’t know exactly what’s happening, but I really  _ highly _ doubt that I’m going to die from any of it.”

Aziraphale shakes his head back, but doesn’t get terribly far in terms of saying anything in response. 

“I mean-I eh, er, ehm…” How the actual  _ fuck _ do you tell someone that God told you that everything was going to essentially be okay and that both of you were e _ ntrusted with the Earth _ \- holy shit. That was...a lot more to think about than he had realised at the time. “Go- Sa- Someone, I don’t know how to say this. I don’t know...really much about what the Hell Raphael’s part in this is aside from…”

Crowley blinked a couple of times, trying harder to make sense of what he could actually put properly together. There’s only a small handful of things that he can really process himself without more time, and so many things that, out of Her presence, make hardly any sense. 

_ Right, Aziraphale. God just made me kind of pass out in reality but it’s okay because in sub-reality she told me than now we’re a new breed of entities entirely. She thinks that we’ve done such a good job taking care of Earth that she wants us to be the official protectors of it. Ah, yeah, called us Earth Angels. Funny right? _

Crowley can’t hold back the little, borderline hysterical, laugh that bubbles up through him. 

“That isn’t funny, Crowley!” 

Crowley startles rather badly, jumping a bit in his own skin before refocusing on Aziraphale who is still hovering above him looking quite unhappy. He has a split moment to be glad that the angel hadn’t made any comment on the Raphael slip, but maybe it’s just the high stress that made his miss it. Either way it’s a small blessing.

“What-I-sorry!” He manages to stutter out. 

The angel’s face is an odd mix between that tearful relief and frustrated not-quite-anger. The blonde shakes his head, and the hands on Crowley’s chest clench and release a couple of times. He could swear that he could feel the tips of Aziraphale’s fingers brushing against his skin. 

“Now is hardly the time to be making jokes. Especially ones about God-”

“I’m so- wait…” No, no. That doesn’t happen really, does it? He can’t have just been thinking about something and then said it aloud. At least not loud nor intelligible enough for someone else to be able to have told what it was that he had said. That being said, this was Aziraphale. A being that has dedicated himself to the written word and knows Crowley better than anyone or anything else. “Did I-did you-I said-”

“And Earth angel’s? Really dear?”

“Wha- look that wasn’t my idea!” He sputters indignantly. “None of this was my idea!”

“Crowley...I know that you’re still unhappy with the Almighty, but you can’t blame Her for everything-”

Crowley can feel the heat rising to his face as he pushes up into a half sitting and half reclined on his forearms posture with Aziraphale’s partial weight still sitting on his chest and abdomen. He doesn’t have much time to think about the fact that the pressure is not only comforting, but also more than welcome. No, he’s rather more focused on the fact that now not only is Aziraphale looking at him with disapproval, but he also has absolutely no way of conveying any information  _ at all.  _

“I thought you said you’d believe me!” He shoots back, and he knows it’s a bit low to use Aziraphale’s more vulnerable words against him, but with his own frustration heating up and being so incredibly overwhelmed not only over time but also within the short span of an hour, he feels like he’ll try just about anything to get someone to understand at least a little bit. 

Aziraphale opens and closes his mouth a couple of times, and his eyebrows are furrowed down over still glassy eyes- and yeah now Crowley feels worse. 

“I-”

Fuck, this is a bad day. 


	11. Revealing Some Feelings?

“Crowley…”

Crowley lets himself flop back down, and reaches around to bring Aziraphale with him. He let’s out a loud sigh, but holds the angel against his chest as he starts to struggle. It only lasts a couple of moments before Aziraphale calms down and allows himself to be held. 

The fight and low underlying anger drains out of him as it nearly always does when Aziraphale seems hurt or distressed. That’s not to say that he isn’t still upset and feeling maybe the slightest bit betrayed, but he’s always had a hard time holding anything against his angel. There’s a deeper reasoning behind that, but he really doesn’t want to think about it right now- there’s so many other things to not-think about that this one takes a backseat. 

“It doesn’t matter, Angel.” He reluctantly loosens his hold around Aziraphale’s soft middle. “I’m tired, I might take a nap of my own volition this time.” Not that he hadn’t been sleeping for hours before this whole fiasco took off...more. 

Crowley lets his arms fall all the way down, knowing that reguardless of if he actually does take a kip, the blonde is going to want to get away from him. He lets his eyes slipped closed and waits for the warmth of the body on top of him to dissapear, but instead it only shifts and a hand pats at his cheeks.

“Don’t fall asleep, Crowley, please!”

He blinks his eyes open quickly and Aziraphale is hovering above him like before, but now he simply looks...sad. 

“It does matter, Crowley.” He follows up. “I’m sorry.”

If Crowley were standing up his knees would have given out on him, but he's about as low and steady as he can get with his entire body being pressed into his unnecessarily expensive mattress. 

“You’re what?”

“I’m sorry. I-” Aziraphale makes an odd little choking noise. “It’s not my place to say these things. It does matter, even if I don’t believe you, I want to and I should give you a chance instead of...Oh, I don’t know! This is all terribly confusing-”

“Angel, slow down. It’s okay.”

“Oh, but it’s not, and you know it!” 

Crowley huffs and wiggles a bit in his place caught between a soft spot and an angel. He considers pushing the denial of it, but they’re both far enough past that, he wagers, that it’s hardly even worth it at this point. 

“Fine. Yes, it’s not okay, but what do you want to do about it?” He tries not to bite the words out, to keep them away from the edge of aggressive even though Aziraphale always knows just how to frustrate him. “I don’t know what to tell you and there’s nothing that you can do. The only thing that we’ve gotten to is you getting anxious and freaked out whilst I’m all but being assaulted by divinity that you have no way to stop or guard against.”

“I-...” It seems like Aziraphale really wants to say something back to him, maybe something reassuring or something that is completely contradictory to the point of stubborn argument. They’re more than familiar with the latter route. Instead he chokes out in an uncharacteristically small voice. “I know, and that frightens me.”

Crowley makes an awful sort of gurgling noise in the back of his throat and has to cough before he can stutter out a, “You what?”

The angel’s eyes can’t seem to stick on his own for very long and his fingers are moving restlessly against Crowley’s chest. “Oh, please don’t make me say it again!”

He shakes his head. “No, I didn’t- I mean- I just didn’t expect you to say that, is all! I wasn’t making fun or trying to push you. Not everything is about me being a monster you know. You’re allowed to be scared, Aziraphale.”

The blonde shifts suddenly, making Crowley let out a breathless grunt as the pressure on his chest shifts back and forth between Aziraphale’s hands. The angel doesn’t seem to notice or care about the noises or physical discomfort he’s causing as he continues to subconsciously perform the movements. Crowley’s hind-brain stops caring about the pressure on his corporation and begins thinking about how it resembles the movements of a cat making biscuits. It’s almost unbearably cute.

“I don’t...think you’re a monster, Crowley.” Aziraphale says, voice no more than a whisper. “You’re the best of any being I’ve ever met.”

And Crowley goes very quickly from his protective and smitten fantasy of kitten Aziraphale on his chest, to not being able to breathe. All of the oxygen hasn’t just been sucked out of the room, but right out of his lungs as well. 

He gives a harsh cough, thoroughly jostling the angel until he shifts back to the point that he’s essentially on Crowley’s lap, and helps him to sit up. A new and almost uncontrollable coughing fit takes over him when he takes note on the new position, which for some reason hits harder than the contact of Aziraphale just laying on top of him. This is the most physical contact they’ve ever made, and it’s only serving to really exacerbate the last sentence to come out of the angel’s mouth. It’s bringing back up those feelings that he really,  _ really _ doesn’t have time to think about. 

Crowley rubs the heels of his palms against his closed eyes, pushing them back into the sockets and rubbing away a bit of wetness at the same time. As he comes back into full awareness he can feel the angel rubbing small and soothing circles into his upper back.

“You…” He struggles for a moment to find the words that he can say out loud. Not necessarily the ones that he wanted to say, but...the ones that he was allowed to. “You can’t say things like that, angel.” 

Crowley blinks his eyes open in time to see Aziraphale’s eyes go soft and take in the gentle shake of his head. 

“This is a fucking mess.” He follows up with before Aziraphale can say anything else that pushes the conversation too much further down that road. Now is really not the time. 

“A bit of one, yes.” 

He lets out a small huff of a laugh at the angel’s agreement with the explicit statement, and tries to ignore how his hands land naturally on the blonde’s waist. 

“Let’s try and start over? At least a little, yeah?”

Aziraphale teeters a bit, forehead drifting towards Crowley’s shoulder like he wants to rest it there before he seems to realize what he’s doing and reels back, looking down at where he’s sitting on Crowley’s lap. He doesn’t move away but freezes up as he takes in their positions. Of course, that makes Crowley begin to overthink as well and now they’re both just statues- and that’s not a helpful thought because Crowley has a...very nice sculpture of an angel and a demon in close contact, not too far away from where they’re resting now...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy holidays everyone!
> 
> -Castor


	12. Let's Try Again

They sit in this stock still position for quite a few minutes before Aziraphale scrambles away and ends up standing awkwardly beside the bed. He’s wringing his hands and shifting back and forth between his feet. Crowley has to look down at his own lap for a couple of seconds before he’s able to catch up to exactly what just happened. He can't bring himself to look over at Aziraphale, and decides against that nap he was thinking of in favour of finally getting off of his bed on the opposite side from the angel. 

He bends his fingers up and curls them into the cuffs of the sleeves of his jumper, pulling them down so that the soft knit edges cover his hands. He grits his teeth for a second against the slight sting of rejection he felt come from Aziraphale’s quick escape and abject discomfort. 

Crowley gives himself a moment to clear his throat before turning back towards the door of the room and slowly walking towards the hall. “Care for a drink, angel?”

“Yes, I quite think I would.” 

Crowley nods absently and makes his way on to the sparse and modern kitchen. He’s hardly ever used it aside from drinking alcohol on his own or maybe the occasional glass of water when he feels like it. There’s a rather nice bottle of Macallan in there somewhere, and he hasn’t got much patience to look, so instead he grabs a couple of glasses from the cupboard, props himself up against the granite countertop and pours them both a couple of fingers. 

He exercises immense willpower in not just throwing back the whole glass, and allows a sip of the drink to sit on his tongue and burn his mouth until Aziraphale makes his appearance. The angel is unusually timid, still wringing his hands just at stomach level. Crowley waves his hand to the other glass, and takes another sip from his own. 

“Well,” He starts, leaning back on his elbows, “Where do you suppose we should start?”

Aziraphale makes a sort of humming noise and throws back nearly all of his drink in one go, making Crowley’s eyebrows raise enough to nearly touch his hair line. 

“I believe we’ve well established the root issue. Being that your former Angel self seems to be plaguing you. So, let’s take it from the suddenly passing out twice bit.”

Crowley grimaces, “Sounds fair.”

He tips the rest of his drink into his mouth and finishes it in one solid gulp before and watches Aziraphale do the same before clearing his throat in a useless attempt to try and sort out his thoughts. 

“Alright, no time like the present then.” He pours himself some more scotch and looks back at the counter before hopping back and up to seat himself on the granite. When he looks back up Aziraphale is looking at him with something akin to polite dissaproval mixed with a familiar fondness that sets him a bit more at ease. “I guess we’ll start with the whole window fiasco.”

Aziraphale pours himself another drink and gently sips on it this time before giving a little hum that sounded something like a ‘go ahead’.

Crowley blows out a long breath and hicks his feet back and forth in the air a couple of times. What he really wants to do is chug down the rest of the bottle of scotch and not relive that trauma, but considering the situation he might have to relive it in some way or another, anyway.

“So, when you had gotten here before, and I was talking to you about the whole,” He makes a wide gesture with both hands, “my angel self stalking me thing. I saw the reflection of it in the windows.”

The angel nods, he’s hardly touched his new drink since Crowley started talking, complete attention on him. Crowley is momentarily overwhelmed with the warm feeling that emanates from his chest at that gaze firmly turned on him, but shakes it off to continue the...story. 

“Okay, well it was talking to me-”

Blue eyes widen a bit as he’s evidently hit by that particular realisation. “That’s why you were saying such strange things!”

Crowley nods with a little hum. “It was saying it wanted me to listen to it, but I didn’t want to. That’s why you heard that voice- you did hear that right?”

Aziraphale scoffs. “My dear boy, I may not know what’s going on, but I’m not deaf.”

Crowley resists the childish urge to stick out his tongue. “Just checking.”

The angel gives his eyes a roll that seems to abort halfway through, as though only just remembering the levity of their situation. Crowley wishes that he would have just finished the exasperated motion.

“Anyway...it kind of handed me off to Mum.”

“It what?”

“You know! Decided it couldn’t deal with me and I guess, told the Almighty or something? Look, I don’t know how this all works, I just know what happened.”

“You SPOKE TO THE ALMIGHTY?” The angel all but yells, voice heightening in pitch as well as volume. 

Crowley winces, maybe he should have been a bit more gentle about that. “Yes?”

“Crowley!”

“What!?”

Aziraphale stands there, mouthing silent words and looking the epitome of gobsmacked. 

“I  _ did _ try to tell you that before, you know. The thing you thought was a joke? The bit about the Earth Angels. Yeah. God.”

There’s an awful lot of sputtering noises happening, which is a bit odd to hear considering the fact that they’re most usually coming from him. 

Crowley sighs. “We talked, the two of us. She told me what I accidentally told you earlier, about us now officially being named the protectors of the Earth.” He lifts his hands up to rub tiredly at his eyes and pinch at the bridge of his nose. “I don’t know what’s going to happen with Raphael though, she didn’t say anything about that besides that he’s going to help me remember? I don’t know.”

Aziraphale blinks at him, “What’s Raphael got to do with any of this?”

Crowley furrows his brows and then really thinks about it. He didn’t know who his angel form was before now. He knew vaguely what he had done and that he had, in fact, been an angel. However, the precise memories of that time burned up in sulfur millennia ago. He tried to think harder. Raphael was an Archangel.  _ The _ archangel of healing, joy and laughter. Aziraphale’s bosses were archangels, and Crowley may be just a bit of an idiot.

“Uhhhhmm, nothing. Nothing at all.”


	13. It was Raphael

“Crowley.” And that would be Aziraphale’s disapproving professor voice. 

“Yes?” He tries, tipping back some more whisky and trying for complete nonchalance that doesn’t quite work since he won’t meet Aziraphle’s eyes, and has begun fidgeting uncomfortably. 

“Crowley.” The disapproval audibly deepens in the angels voice and Crowley doesn’t think fast enough to hide his wince. 

“Do we really have to talk about this right now?” 

“I rather think we do, actually.” Aziraphale steps a bit closer to him. “I think you said something about him before as well, didn’t you?”

“Ehm, no, I don’t think so.”

Aziraphale’s eyebrows twitch, and he stares Crowley down unwaveringly .

He throws his hands up, glad that he’s sipped just enough of the whisky that nothing sloshes over with the grand gesture. He sets it loudly on the table before turning back. 

“It doesn’t matter, angel!”

“Well, it must do if you’re reacting so strongly! I know you, Crowley!”

“Just drop it!”

“What good would that do with what else is going on? You weren’t going to tell me about the other issue either until you had no choice, and look at just how well that turned out!” The angel lets out a heavy puff of air. “I want to help you, Crowley. More than anything. But it’s so terribly hard when you refuse to tell me things.”

“You don’t have to help me!”

“No, I don’t, but,” The blonde steps on towards him, enough that Crowley spreads his legs a bit for the other to step between before having the time to think better of the action- which is what he gets for trusting someone, he supposes, “I want to.”

Crowley hikes his shoulders up towards his ears and tries to look away, but when Aziraphale picks his hands up from the cool counter and grasps them warmly in his own, his eyes snap back from their wandering. 

“Please Crowley.” And those beautiful blue eyes get wider and shinier than they were before. Crowley swears to everything that no being could pout or beg quite as well as the angel in front of him could. Though he’s sure that it doesn’t hurt that he has the softest of soft spots for Aziraphale either. 

“Angel…”

“I’ll try my very hardest to live up to your expectations this time...and to keep my own word to you. I’m not going to judge you.”

Crowley heaves out a loud sigh, and shifts around without the ability to use his hands. 

“I...can’t.”

“Why not?” It’s not forceful or frustrated, but instead, almost unbearably soft.

“I shouldn’t, I guess is a better way of putting it.”

Aziraphale makes a motion that he assumes is meant to reiterate his ‘why not’ statement. 

“Angel, I don’t think you really know what you’re asking.”

“Maybe not, but I’ll never know if you don’t tell me.”

He opens his mouth, and then closes it. Aziraphale squeezes his hands and he looks up at the ceiling to escape the angel’s sapphire gaze for a moment. The ceiling offers no help, and the being beyond that offers no help either. 

Shit. What is he going to do here? Maybe it shouldn’t be such a big deal. What if he just ought to come out with it. Maybe it won’t be so bad, or the angel just won’t care at all. He could just be making a bigger deal out of this than it really is. He didn’t even remember who he was before, until recently, and he’s only just starting to recall things about that time Before. He can’t remember being any sort of big deal, and even in the human’s lore he’s never been terribly much, and hardly even appears. So, while it’s possible that Aziraphale may know about his name, there may be nothing in terms of expectations or anything connected to who he was. 

Crowley lets out something of a low growling noise, and squeezes the angel’s hands back before looking decisively down into his eyes. 

“Raphael has everything to do with this.”

“Why?” Aziraphale blinks at him, eyebrows starting to furrow. “Did he do something to make this happen?”

Crowley snickers. “Yeah, kind of.”

“Crowley.” 

“Right, fine. I was Raphael. You happy now?” That was a bit more forceful than he meant to say it, something more frustrated taking hold of him when Aziraphale started up with that heavy edged tone again. Like he was being unreasonable in not being completely forthcoming. Like this was easy.

“I know you’re upset with me, and if you’re very sure then I’m so inclined to believe you, but...are you absolutely sure? You are the Archangel Raphael? You’re not...trying to mess with me?”

“Yes I’m sure, and no I’m not. I’m not Raphael. I may have been at one time, but I’m definitely not any more, and will never be again.” He doesn’t even have it in him to be upset that, despite his reiteration of his promise, the angel has already doubted him again.

Aziraphale begins breathing heavily, and his hands tighten almost unbearably on Crowley's own. 

“Angel?”

“You’re an Archangel.”

“Uhm, no. Was at one point, and not a very good one I don’t think.” Crowley tries to lighten everything with a playful sort of scoffing noise, and shrugs his shoulders. “It’s not a big deal, angel. It might be haunting me, but I haven’t been an angel for a long time. So, no worries.”

Aziraphale squints at him, looking significantly more concerned than he did before, almost to the point that he looks as though he’s in pain. 

“But Raphael didn’t fall. He was said to have gone off to the stars after the War-”

“Yeah well, he fell. And-” Crowley tries to wiggle his fingers a bit and Aziraphale’s grip begins to slowly loosen. “He’s defiantly not just avoiding everyone with his creations, though I wouldn’t blame an angel for doing it.” 

Aziraphale shakes his head and squeezes his eyes tight, making an almost whimpering sound.

“Angel, it’s not that big a deal. It’s okay.”

Aziraphale shakes his head again, this time more vehemently. “Hurts.”

“Hurts?” Crowley’s brows furrow and he searches the blonde’s pinched up face. “What hurts?”

“My head, I-” Aziraphale tires to pull one of his hands away but Crowley holds steadfast. “Thinking about it hurts. It’s so bright, Crowley.”

Crowley shoots a look heaven wards.  _ What are you doing? Why are you hurting him, he hasn’t done anything. Why does remembering hurt?  _ Of course, God offers him no reply as per usual.

He looks back down and squeezes Aziraphale’s hands gently. “Then don’t remember. Think about something else. It’s okay. It doesn’t matter. The past is the past.”

Aziraphale shakes his head once again, and when his eyes open his pupils are blown, though one slightly more than the other. 

“But you’re...it...you…” The angel’s body begins to sway a bit and his eyelids fluttering.

“Angel, breathe. Slowly in and out.” Crowley finally lets go of the angel's hands to steady him by the shoulders, and begins breathing in and out loudly himself to encourage the angel to match it. 

“Think about something else. About the bookshop and breakfast tea. Hamachi and wasabi, the real stuff, not that sad horseradish. Old paper and cotton fabric.” Aziraphale’s breathing begins to slow, matching his steady rhythm. “Crushed velvet and honey rum.”

Aziraphale lists forward a bit and Crowley slides down off of the counter and gently switches their positions, allowing the other the stability of a firm surface behind him. The angel then uses his hands to brace himself on cold and hard edge. 

“Okay?”


	14. He Couldn't

Aziraphale slowly nods, his face relaxing. The angel is steady enough that Crowley reluctantly pulls away to snag an empty glass and fill it with water. He presses the cup gently into Aziraphale’s hands. 

“Drink. You’ll feel better.”

The angel seems hesitant at first, but lifts the cup to his mouth anyway. Once it’s there he drains it fairly quickly and his shoulders relax and drop from where they had tensed up in pain. His hands are a bit shaky, but as he places the cup on the counter behind him, he’s notably calmer.

Crowley shifts on his feet. “How do you...I mean, how do you feel?”

Blue eyes flicker up to him and Aziraphale tries for a smile which comes out small and twitchy, but genuine nonetheless. 

“I’m alright. A bit shaken is all.”

Crowley makes a noise that’s a mixture between an affirmation and a “uh huh, sure…”

“Really, I’m fine.”

“Yeah, you seemed fine.”

“Crowley-”

“Don’t,  _ Crowley _ , me. I hate it when you use that tone and I think you’ve exhausted that already, it’s going to lose its desired effect,  _ angel _ .”

Aziraphale blinks at him, and maybe that was a bit too snappy, but all of this has been really tiring and no one could really blame him. He blows out a long breath and the angel’s eyelashes flutter, which makes Crowley all too suddenly aware of his position almost caging Aziraphale against the countertop. He takes a wobbly step back.

“I’m sorry.” The blonde says, and there’s a light tug at Crowley’s sleeve where he’s grabbed on. They both look down at the connection which must have somehow happened in between handing him the glass of water and him coming back to himself. He doesn’t let go and the material stays slightly stretched. 

“It’s fine.” Crowley looks back up. “Maybe don’t try to think too much about angel me again.”

“I don’t know how much of an option that’s going to be.”

Crowley shakes his head. “It’s not worth it if it’s going to hurt you every time you think about it.”

“And none of this is hurting you then?”

He presses his lips together into a thin line, standing firm when Aziraphale gives his jumper a little tug. 

“That’s not the point.” He counters after a moment.

“I’m fairly sure it is, actually. And I hardly think that my choices are your business.”

“This is my business, Aziraphale! This is the very definition of my business!” He huffs, balling his hands up into tight fists. “Would you just listen to me for once!”

“No, I don’t think I will.”

Crowley grits his teeth together, canines lengthening with his heightened anger and frustration. He lets out something of a rattling low hiss and very deliberately bares his teeth at the angel across from him.

“You wouldn’t, would you.” It’s not a question.

Aziraphale flinches and looks himself on the brink of frustration. Good, Crowley meant to push some buttons there.

“Not in this, certainly.” The hand grasping Crowley’s sweater tightens. “I’ve not been terribly helpful, and I’m sure I’ll continue to make mistakes, but I’m not leaving you alone in this. If that means some pain for myself then so be it.”

He shakes his head, refusing to let himself deflate at Aziraphale’s soft sentiments this time. 

“I don’t know what to think. All of this is giving me whiplash.” Crowley runs a hand through his hair and winces when sharpened nails catch his scalp. He pulls his hand away and lets out a muffled growl at the sight of black bleeding down from his now claw like fingernails, the discolouration reaching towards his palm. “I’m me and then I’m not. I’m sleeping and then I’m forcefully in a subconscious state. You’re concerned and then you’re distrusting me. You say you care and then you do something that makes it seem like you don’t. I’m hurting and then you are. It’s too much, Aziraphale. I can’t deal with this right now.”

“I-”

“I think you should leave.” He grounds out. There’s too much to think about, so many things to juggle. Besides that, he’s more worried now than he had been before. He’s no longer trying to hide something from Aziraphale, that would have been easy enough. No, now Aziraphale knows something that makes him vulnerable, and something that not only gives him trouble, but seems to extend its reach to the angel as well. He tries more forcefully pull his arm away from where Aziraphale has grasped him. 

The jumper gives a bit, stretching and making an uncomfortable ripping noise as the angel holds steadily on. There’s a look of determination on Aziraphale’s face that Crowley isn’t terribly happy with.

“I’m sorry that you feel that way, but I’m not leaving.”

“Why the Heaven not?” He nearly shouts, finishing off with a sound that rumbles like a growl. Something in him delights in the fact that faced with a more demonic looking and sounding Crowley, Aziraphale looks disquieted. 

The angel shifts and flounders before opening his mouth and yelling back, face burning, “Because I love you, you idiot!”

He’s died. No, no. He’s still asleep. That’s the only way that this can be happening. He blows out some air and wobbles back but is held in place by the angel’s unforgiving grip on his jumper. That would make more sense than anything else that has happened so far. He passed out after getting in the shower earlier, and he’s still asleep. He’ll wake up when Aziraphale  _ actually  _ comes in. Maybe he’ll even forget all about this when he wakes up.

“You don’t.” He says, meaning for it to come out coldly, but his voice is telling in how strained it is.

“Excuse me?”

Crowley shakes his head, and starts doing whatever he can think to try and wake himself up. He bites down on his tongue, wincing when his fangs pierce through it in neat little holes, and the tangy taste of copper travels through his mouth. 

Well, that didn’t work. 

He digs his claws into the palms of his hands, and begins to squeeze his eyes shut so tightly that he sees spots.

“Crowley stop!” Aziraphale finally lets go of his jumper, but only ends up moving his hands closer as he pulls Crowley’s claws out of the meat of his hands, holding onto them tightly to keep him from doing it again, and applying pressure to the little wounds. 

“No!” He tries to pull away, but Aziraphale holds onto him firmly. He hisses. “I just want to wake up!”

The angel blinks and furrows his brows. “You  _ are _ awake, Crowley.”

“I’m not! I can’t be!” And now the emotions are running high enough that his eyes are stinging. That’s just what he needs right now, to cry. He squares up and hisses again, baring his fangs. If he cries now, with his body in a demonic shift, the liquid will come out as blood, leaving a metallic smell in the air and sticky red tracks in their wake. 

“Why not?” Aziraphale hasn’t moved or budged in the slightest. Keeping an even grip on his hands and standing his ground against him. 

He laughs bitterly and his chest is tight, and there’s not enough air that he doesn’t need to breathe, and he can’t think straight, and he can’t see right. He shuts his eyes tight again. 

“Why not? You’ve been here the whole time  _ Aziraphale _ ,” He bites out the name at the dream figment, “what of this really seems like it could be real, hm?” He opens his eyes again and sneers. “You just sealed the deal with the last bit.”

“The-” Aziraphale shakes his head. “The last bit?”

“Aziraphale doesn’t love me, he couldn’t, not ever.”

Blue eyes lock onto him, and within moments he’s being tugged in close to Aziraphale’s body with supernatural angelic strength. Crowley fights against the closeness, pulse racing and demonic instincts screeching at the proximity. 

“That’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever told me, my dear. And mind, you’ve said some terribly stupid things.”

Crowley freezes. Blinks. Blinks again. And again.

“What?”


	15. In between

Aziraphale raises an eyebrow at him, a bitchy, petulant eyebrow. There’s a pang of fondness at that which would usually bolster up his attitude, but given the circumstances it just stays as a muted pang. 

“You heard what I said, Crowley.”

He lets out a sputtering cough and keeps his body ridged against the small part of him that wants desperately to sink into the angel’s warmth. 

“I know I’ve made a mess of things, but I do love you terribly, none-the-less.”

Crowley lets out another cough, but this time it’s from something stuck in his throat. That something being uncomfortably close to a sob. His eyes are stinging and have gotten a reddish film over them, if he blinks now there’s no doubt that a drop of blood will streak down his cheek, and even with everything he really doesn’t want to ruin Aziraphale’s clothes. He knows how much they mean to him. 

Crowley tries to pull away, but to no avail. Aziraphale is incredibly stubborn when he tries, and he’s certainly trying now. Crowley’s own demonic nature may have risen to the surface, but if anything was his weakness it was Aziraphale, and that kept the worst of it at bay.

“I’ll ruin your clothes if you keep me like this.” He grates out, already feeling the “tears” begin to edge their way out.

“I don’t care, I’m not letting you go. Not this time, and not again.”

The sob that chokes him this time makes it all the way out, and the thick hot drops of blood begin their constant streams down his face, soaking into the soft crushed velvet of Aziraphale’s vest. 

“You- you-”

The arms around him squeeze him, and he feel’s Aziraphale’s face nuzzle into his neck. 

He bites down on his lip, fangs piercing the plush skin there and adding a tiny bead more of blood to the growing dark spot. 

“You love me?”

Aziraphale hums into his neck. “More than anything.”

He can hold back the sob that comes out at that, and the angel’s hands flex against him with the heave of his body. 

“I’m sorry.” Aziraphale murmurs.

“Mmah luf you ‘oo.” He mumbles weakly, sniffling. 

The angel squeezed him again, even more tightly this time. “I know.”

Crowley rubs his face against the soft fabric beneath it and digs his claws into the angel’s soft middle. This time he lets out the sob that bubbles up and opens his mouth to bite down on the vest under his mouth to muffle the noise. His fangs sink into the fabric easily and he feels guilty as he gnaws on the clothing gently to soothe himself. Aziraphale’s hand presses in at the top of his spine and rubs gentle circles there. 

“It’s alright, love. Let it out now. I’m so,” Aziraphale’s voice catches and the arm around him squeezes tightly for a moment, “so sorry.”

Crowley lets out a high whine and lets the bloody tears flow. 


	16. Cleaning up

They stand there for a long time. It’s a good thing that they don’t actually need food or water. He just sticks close to Aziraphale, face buried into his neck and mouth clamped down on antique crushed velvet. The fabric around his face is dark and sticky. The angel hasn’t moved either, aside from rubbing little circles on his back. Crowley lets out a puny cough as he slowly unlocks his jaw and pulls away, grimacing at the nearly unrecognizable piece of clothing that Aziraphale has been wearing for hundreds of years. 

The angel allows him only about a foot of space, still keeping a solid hold on him.

“‘M sorry ‘bout your clothes.”

The angel shakes his head. “They’re just clothes, dear.”

Crowley furrows his brows. “You love these clothes.”

Blue eyes soften, locking him in their gaze. “I love you more.”

Crowley flinches and then just looks at the angel. He can’t find the proper words to say back to that, his mouth just slightly open as the words go to sink into his skin. 

One of Aziraphale’s hands comes up to cup his cheek and he allows himself to close his eyes and lean into the embrace. 

“Are you feeling better?”

He gives a little nod against the angel’s hand, and lets out a puff of hot air against his palm. 

“Well,” Aziraphale takes in and blows out a rather large breath, “so do I. Perhaps it’s time to take a proper break from all of this then, what do you think?”

Crowley blinks open an eye. “I don’ know if I can.”

The angel makes a sour face, “That may be true, but we still ought to give it a try.”

“‘M not complaining.”

“Good!” Aziraphale steps away and Crowley is surprised at just how bereft he feels when the angel pulls away and their bodies finally stop touching. Crowley reaches up to feel at the bloodied cloth, crunching the fabric between his fingers and hissing lowly at cracking and spalling. The angel gives him a small smile and pushes his hand away before giving his own fingers a little snap and fully changing his shirt, now sans vest. 

Crowley tries to smile back, but he realises now that no matter how strained the smile may seem it was likely nothing in comparison to red streaks and blotchy staining on his face. He lifts up a hand and scrubs at his cheeks, but Aziraphale seems to know what he’s getting at beforehand and leads him over to the sink. The angel looks around fruitlessly for a moment before giving up and simply miracling a flannel into his hand. He dampens it and moves slowly to telegraph what he wants to do before gently cleaning Crowley’s face. The cloth will be useless after this. Demon blood, in any form, doesn’t really come out. It will always leave some sort of imprint, whether physical or sub-physical. 

When he’s done Aziraphale drops the rag in a little wet heap in the sink and gives Crowley a bit of a shaky smile. 

“This has been a rather more exciting day than I thought it would be.”

Crowley snorts. “Guess so. Sorry I ruined your plans for dinner.” He says, trying for something a bit lighter, edging on his more normal teasing sarcasm.

“Oh hush.” That pulls a genuine smile from him and Crowley’s chest warms. 

Crowley lets out a long breath. “I think...I want to try to nap.” 

He grimaces just thinking about his bedroom right now, however, he’s more than exhausted at this point. “But I don’t really,” he pauses, unsure if he can actually say the next piece out loud, “want to be alone.”

The angel blinks at him, looking about as surprised as Crowley feels that he was able to say that aloud with only the minute pauses that he had. 

“I’d be more than happy to stay with you, dear.”

He shifts uncomfortably and looks around as though he’ll find something new in a flat he’s been in for ages. “I think I have a couple of books in my office?”

Aziraphale tilts his head, “That’s not necessary, I can miracle one of the books from my shop. I have a few that I’ve been re-reading.”

“Of course you have.” He responds, and Aziraphale gives him a look that has him letting out a little huff of laughter.

He takes a wobbly step back and tries to balance himself, standing with his legs shoulder width apart until he feels like he’s not going to fall over at the slightest touch. They weren’t touching before but now he’s reestablished the normal spread of space between them. Aziraphale gives him an appraising once over, a delicate smile on his lips as he seems to gauge whether Crowley is going to shatter into pieces or stay put together on his own. He would be a bit offended if he hadn’t just been crying into the angel’s shoulder with the fabric of his vest between his teeth.

He takes a breath and slowly holds out a hand, palm up, to the angel. 

“Come to my room with me?”

The delicate smile warms and becomes more sturdy, and there’s no hesitation as a soft hand slips into his own. Aziraphale’s hand is warm and holds onto him with a measure of strength that speaks of the fear lying beneath. 

They shuffle on to the room. Crowley’s usual gait has escaped him and his feet never fully leave the floor as they walk back to his room. The sheets are still mused from his nap and the incident earlier.

“Do you want a...I don’t know, a chair or something?”

“If that would make you feel more comfortable.”

Crowley whips his head around, swaying a bit in place as he looks back. “You mean you want to sit in the...bed with me?”

“I- yes.” The angel squeezes his hand but Crowley can feel the shakiness there and blinks in bewilderment. “If you’d be amenable.”

“Nguh, yeah. I mean, yes.” He coughs around a handful of syllables that aren’t exactly words. “No yeah, that’s fine.”

Crowley makes an over-wide sweeping motion to his bed and ungracefully moves to sit down. Unfortunately, his hand and brain don’t quite agree and he hold’s tight to the angel’s hand as he falls to the bed, pulling the other along without a thought. Aziraphale didn’t seem to foretell this particular action either and the pull causes a chain reaction ending with Crolwey’s butt hitting the mattress and Aziraphale following in a clumsy collision.

“Ah!”


	17. Collision

Crowley falls back to the bed, the quick and unexpected impact punching the air out of him. If it was just that he would have recovered quickly enough. He’s not the most stable of people, though he can often play off his inherent clumsiness with an elegant sort of grace that’s been carefully cultivated over the years. Turns out, that sort of thing can’t be applied to an angel falling on top of you afterwards. 

“Oof!” Crowley’s arms come up on the automatic and his hands drop onto Aziraphale’s waist. Then there they are. Crowley on his back, on his bed, with the angel laying atop him, straddling his hips. 

“Oh.” Aziraphale says softly, big blue eyes blinking down at the demon beneath him.

Crowley, for all he’s worth, can’t remember how to speak let alone breathe at the moment. Thankfully he doesn’t need to breathe, but the longer that he doesn’t speak the more visually uncomfortable Aziraphale becomes. 

“I-erm ah,” He struggles a bit more, some garbled sounds coming out before he’s able to fill in, “m’sorry.”

The blonde shakes his head. His plump cheeks are a lovely shade of red and Crowley thinks that if he focuses enough he might be able to feel it...or maybe that’s just his own face.

“It’s alright dear, but maybe you could…” Aziraphale looks down a bit, eyes going to the nearly nonexsistant space between them and sticking before Crowley realises that he meant to look at the demon’s hands, still holding steadfast to his waist. “L-let me...ehm go?”

Crowley swallows thickly and flexes his fingers, causing the angel to squirm.

“Right. Yes. Sorry.” He says and pries his own fingers away.

Aziraphale just looks at him a moment more, and there’s a sort of...bright and glossy sheen to his eyes that wasn’t there before. He shifts and Crowley squirms himself at the weight shift against his body. Aziraphale dips down a bit more and Crowley can feel his breath fan out over his face. Crowley drops his now empty hands to the bed spread and lets his fingers dig in.

“Crowley?”

“Mh’yeah?”

“May I...that is,” the blonde gives a little cough and Crowley’s eyes flutter, “may I kiss you?”

Crowley’s breath leaves him much more harshly than it had upon falling to the bed and he stares wide eyed up at the man above him. He makes an embarrassing gurgling sounding noise before realizing that he can just nod.

Aziraphale smiles nervously before steadily lowering himself until their lips begin to brush, and then it happens all at once. Their lips fully press together and Crowley’s hands screw up more in the sheets beneath them. He takes a heady breath in through his nose before tilting his head just a bit more to the side and pushing up gently. There’s a soft hum from the angel as their lips slot together just that much better.

Crowley tries not to think too much, and allows Aziraphale to take charge. A hand comes up and his mouth opens in a small gasp as his hair is pulled back just slightly. His head tips and Aziraphale’s tongue slips expertly into his mouth. Blunt and manicured nails scratch against his scalp and he preens amongst the different outlets of attention.

When the angel finally pulls back Crowley’s eyes have blown out again. Yellow bled all the way to the corners and pupils expanded to large black circles. Aziraphale’s tongue swipes out over his lips. 

“Was that alright?” The angel sounds slightly raspy and out of breath. 

Crowley just hums back, and swallows around his tongue, which feels quite a bit bigger than it did before. He tries for a smile, and it’s just on the other side of strained. That, however, doesn’t seem to bother Aziraphale very much. 

“Good. Very good.” He sits up slowly, weight landing heavily on Crowley’s hips. It’s a pleasant feeling, more than that really, and he can’t help the unbecoming squeaking noise that ekes out of him as the angel settles. “I rather enjoyed that as well.”

Crowley wonders aimlessly if he’s going to need to replace his sheets after this. He may just miracle them, but the whole over orchestrated process of the making and getting of them, not to mention the exorbitant price, has always given him something of a demonic thrill. He’s sure they’ve got to have some tears and holes from his hands and claws. Though...now there’s this very uncomfortable complication with the fact of his not technically being a demon anymore. 

“Darling?”

Crowley blinks rapidly, refocusing his blurring vision. “What?”

“I lost you there for a moment.” Aziraphale looks very genuinely concerned and Crowley realises that he may have looked like he was going into another angel-him trance. 

“I’m okay. It’s okay, I was just thinking about my sheets.” He pauses, watches as the angel goes from concern to confusion to something more embarrassed and- “I mean because- I’ve been- claw hand finger holes! Tearing sheets gotta be new worn right?”

The confusion takes over. “Dear, I’m not entirely sure that was English.”

Crowley winces and blows out a defeated breath. “I know.”

Aziraphale gives him a little smile. It seems like a pity prize for both being okay and for trying, and he hates that it really does make him feel better. 

He wiggles under the prolonged scrutiny, trying not to focus on the way that Aziraphale’s hips and butt weigh heavily in the dip of his hips.

“Nap?” He offers hopefully, blood still warming his cheeks, having roared back up after his little mental aside. 

The angel gives him a once over and a little approving nod before leaning down and pressing a very solid and hot kiss to his lips, unafraid to open Crowley’s lips with his tongue and thoroughly map out the inside of his mouth before pulling away and sliding off of his lap like it was nothing. It takes him a couple of seconds to catch up after that, and a minute or so before he can do anything to follow it up. By that time Aziraphale has already turned down the covers and made himself comfortable up against the many pillows Crowley keeps stacked at the head of his bed. 

The blonde pats the space next to him and Crowley consciously pauses this time to commit to memory the scene of Aziraphale sitting up in his bed with an air of confidence and comfort that makes him look like he belongs there. He doesn’t think he would mind terribly if the angel acted properly like he had a place in this part of Crowley’s life as well.

He crawls up to the empty space, having to kick at odd and tangled lumps where their movements earlier had mused the sheets. When he’s close enough he can tell that the show of confidence that the angel was putting on wasn’t quite as real as it seemed. His hands are twisting together above his stomach and he can’t seem to really look at Crowley as the demon makes his way up to his side. Crowley sits beside him, slumped down and nearly laying compared to Aziraphale’s proper posture before lifting himself up again. This time he takes initiative and presses their lips together, though far more chaste than before. 

He pulls back slowly and forces himself to make eye contact. He’s glad that he does as he gets the chance to watch Aziraphale’s eyes slowly flutter open.

Crowley opens and closes his mouth a couple of times before he’s able to push out a breathy, “I love you.”

The angel seems to melt at the words, his stiff posture relaxing as he scoots down so that they’re fully laying next to one another. He’s pulled in close, face pressed into the angel’s neck and body pressed even closer than it had been in their hug. 

“I love you too, Crowley.”

He lets his arm snake out and around Aziraphale’s waist and gives his soft middle a tight squeeze, breathing in the warm and familiar scent of him and letting his eyes slip closed as the sentiment he’s always wanted to hear washes over him again.

“Goodnight, angel.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tiny nod to Lockdown here because I can't help myself.


	18. Reliving

Crowley feels like he’s floating, but not uncomfortably so. Everything is dark, which he remedies easily by slowly blinking open his eyes. There’s a faint and misty blue light settling over the room and when he rubs the back of his hands against his eyes his vision steadies enough that he can realise that the room is not his own. The walls are a cream white colour that his home has never seen outside of Aziraphale. 

Speaking of- Crowley sits up so quickly that it would give him whiplash if he were human. He still suffers from a minor headache, head spinning as he kicks his feet over the side of what’s not really a bed, but more of a cushy slab. His comfy dark clothes have been swapped for a light linen draping. It’s cinched at the waist in a wide gold embroidered band. As he looks down at it, fingers tracing over a pattern that feels familiar, rivulets of curled auburn hair fall over his shoulders and become a curtain in front of his face. He pauses and swallows, his throat suddenly very dry.

Crowley slowly moves his bare feet, making contact with the cold marble floor. Bright, and white. Very white. There's no Aziraphale anywhere, there's none of his flat even present.  


The cloth shifts against him as he walks, little whispers of sound coming from the brushes against his skin. He’s had his hair cut short for years now and feeling the long curled strands weighing his head down as they sway is an odd and almost uncomfortable quick change. There’s a normal looking door along one wall and he’s able to open it easily. The room beyond this one is even brighter, longer and wider, with an almost golden glow to it. 

He wants to call out Aziraphale's name, but for some reason he finds himself unable to.

There’s something like a breeze blowing past him, but it's softer, warmer and more intentional than that. He continues walking through the room, unsure of what else to do and feeling almost an odd sort of numb as his legs move on their own. The stretch evolves into something like a colonnade. Large and open and airy and the feeling of familiarity is back so strongly that he staggers as he walks, feeling almost like the air is being knocked out of him the more he looks around. 

“Raphy!”

His eyes snap up and Crowley surprises himself at how easily he responds to a nickname that he hasn’t heard for millennia. He comes to a full stop at the sight of who called his name. He wobbles and bites down hard on his tongue. 

The being running towards him is undeniably an angel, and an archangel at that. 6 pairs of sparkling and magnificent wings shifting as he comes bounding towards him. Bright golden hair shimmering on its own beneath a crown of jewels that drips down onto his forehead and rests delicately in his hair. Light blue eyes shine at him and there’s a broad grin on his face. Something sticks in Crowley’s throat and he just stands there until the other comes to a huffing stop in front of him.

“Where are your wings?”

He blinks, and knows now that his eyes are a deep and swirling emerald. 

The other steps forward, very easily into his personal space and leans around him slightly to press at the space between his shoulder blades. A shudder of ethereal power runs through him and his wings materialize on their own. 

“There, much better. Your wings are far too beautiful to be hidden like that. I know you’re working on it for the whole “Earth” thing, but don’t worry about it now. I hate to see you without them.” 

“Samael.” He breathes out. He hasn’t seen his brother since before the war. Not like this. Happy, bright, loving, confident. 

A hand comes up to caress his face and the young archangel smiles more gently at him and brushes a thumb over the apple of his cheek. 

The creature that sits on the throne of hell now is Lucifer...no, it’s Satan. Even when Samael re-designated himself as Lucifer he still retained that gentle side. The loving piece of himself. Now there’s nothing. Or perhaps there is but it still hurts Crowley to look too hard for it. Samael and he did everything together. They were best friends as much as they were family. 

The hand falls to grab one of his own and tug him along. 

“Come on then, we’ve got some work to do.”

Crowley in Raphael’s body stutters unintelligibly. “W-work?”

Samael makes a snorting noise and tugs him a bit harder. “Yes! Stars aren't going to make themselves!”

“Stars…” Crowley nearly whispers out. There’s a stinging sensation in his eyes and that numb feeling is back, like he’s floating rather than walking. Stars. Making stars. 

They seem to jump space and time because very quickly they’re in an area that’s almost completely open and dusted with a light purple sheen. There’s another angel in that opening too, and the arcing gold wings make him start to dig his heels in. That doesn’t matter much as it hardly hinders their movement.

“Look at who I found!” Samael calls out. 

The other angel turns and Crowley wants to both cry and yell at him, but this Gabriel is just a baby and he smiles so brilliantly at seeing Raphael that the crying feeling is what begins to win out. The smile drops.

“Raphael, what’s wrong?”

Once they’re close enough Samael releases him and turns around with his eyebrows furrowed. Gabriel loosens the strip of gold fabric hanging around his neck like a scarf and steps forward. He gently holds Crowley's head and lifts the soft fabric up to dab at his eyes, brushing away the tears.

He shakes his head before a trembling sob rips its way from his throat and he falls to his knees. There’s some concerned calling of his name, but very quickly the timber and intonation change. He struggles to gather himself together enough to look up, and wishes fervently that he didn’t. It’s still Gabriel yelling at him, but this time from further away, a large sword in his hand, one that was nearly the length of his entire body, and dark red-brown stains on otherwise white and gold robes. 

Crowley chokes and shakes his head violently. “No no no no no.” He cries. 

Tears are streaming down his face and his hair whips around him hard enough to hurt his skin as it smacks against it. 

“I can’t. I can’t-” His voice cracks and breaks and he lets out a long whine.

“You can. You’ve got to.” His own voice responds. Or rather, Raphael’s voice. 


	19. The Healer

Crowley tries to breathe through the thick feeling in his throat and stares in front of himself as Gabriel continues to yell before slowly fading away into the purple light. He lets out some heavy huffs, tears still rolling down his cheeks and drool escaping the corners of his mouth.The robe feels so much heavier on his body than it was before, and he’s pulled down towards the ground. 

“Why? Why this?”

_ Because you have to remember now.  _

“Why?” He sobs out.

_ I can’t tell you that. _

Crowley lets his head hang until his forehead presses against the formerly immaculate white flooring. Of course not, why would he be allowed to know why it was that he had to go through all of this pain. He thought that maybe it had been enough and culminated with the Earth Angel thing. Perhaps that was just too much to ask for. Story of his life actually. 

_ Get up. You have to go help now. _

“I can’t do that.”

_ You can. _

“I won’t.”

_ You have to. _

“No!” He shouts and his voice cracks and wobbles. He heaves out strangled breaths and turns his face to press his cheek into the floor, tears running over the bridge of his nose and into his shining hair. 

_ You can do this. You are much stronger than you think you are. _

“I’m not.” He sobs out, voice hoarse and whispery as he chokes on his own tears. “I’m not.”

Crowley can feel the world shift around him again and he clenches his fists so tightly that his nails bite unforgivingly into the meat of his palms. 

“Raphael.” 

He tenses up at that voice. It’s not the one in his head. 

Solid hands lift him up from under his arms. Holding him until he can get his feet underneath himself. Samael brushes a hand through his hair and tilts his head up. His face is dirty and for the first time ever an angel has dark circles and bruises. 

“Are you okay?”

Crowley chokes for a moment, all too much bubbling to the surface. “I’m- yes...I’m fine.”

Samael makes a stiff nodding motion and swings around quickly to check the area around them. Where it was a clean expanse of glowing surface and light, now it’s a battle zone. It’s still bright, but the floor is doused with a thick mess of red and gold. 

Samael nods at him again and pulls a sword from thin air.

“Here. Protect yourself.”

The hilt is pressed into Crowley’s limp hand, and he stares at it for a moment before looking back up into steely blue eyes and flattening his palm and pressing it back.

“No.” He shakes just a bit as he steps back. “I don’t need that.”

“Raphael, they don’t care! They’ll kill you!” The sword is shoved back towards him and he takes another step back. 

“Then I’ll die.” Crowley states with a firm enough finality that his brother seems surprised. There’s a moment of stark silence where they just stare at one another, waiting for the other to back down, before Samael finally breaks.

“Okay, okay. Just...be careful.”

Crowley knows he should hold his tongue, he really does, but he’s never been particularly good at that.

“Why are you doing this, Samael?”

His brother blinks at him and Crowley gets struck with a strong pang of loss that this was the last time he ever got to call the angel in front of him his brother.

“You know why.”

“No, I don’t!” He can feel power, old power, raw power, flowing through him and crackling at his fingertips. “There’s no excuse to kill, not ever!”

All semblance of kindness drops from his brother’s face and suddenly, he looks like a completely different person.

“It had to be done, and you know it. You saw what was happening, you heard, you felt it. I was the only one strong enough to speak up, and if bringing to the light what’s wrong brings war then I’ll lead it until I’ve won.”

Crowley shakes his head. He can feel his eyes stinging again with tears. “This isn’t the answer.”

“It is now. Don’t pretend I’m in the wrong.” Samael begins to turn away, taking a step forward before rocking back a bit. “You were never a very good angel, and neither was I. We’re the same, you’ll realise that soon. I pray that you will.”

Crowley can’t help but gape after him as he walks away, breaking into a run back into the fray. 

_ _ _ Help. _ Raphael thinks at him.

“Help?”

_ You are the angel of healing, are you not? _

I am  _ not  _ you.

There’s something akin to a sigh before Raphael counters.  _ You are right now. _

And he’s really got no better comeback or reasoning to that because...he is, in every way physically, Raphael at the moment. Power manifests at the tips of his fingers again and he looks down at them, the gentle fizz of celestial power is so different from the burning warmth of hell. 

_ Remember. And help. _

Remember, he mouths to himself, furrowing his brow at the growing bloodbath and feeling a rising anger. This is bullshit. All of it. Remember? Remember what?

There’s no answer and his teeth grind together as he growls and finally just decides to move forward. There’s an angel only metres in front of him, writhing on the ground, and he drops to his knees beside them. The fabric of his robes immediately becomes wet at the knees. 

He’s hit by a sense of deja vu and...he’s seen this. He’s seen it before. When God...when…

Crowley lets his eyes slip closed and pictures the moment. The power in his hands solidifies and he pulls his staff from the aether. The wood hums against his skin and he lets out a silent gasp as he feels it, eyes opening suddenly. The angel beneath him moans in pain and he’s moving on autopilot without even time for a thought. 

He waves the staff over the angel’s body and their discomfited squirming slowly stops. The wounds they have sustained begin to glow and he’s able to single mindedly find the problem areas and use healing miracles to knit them together. About halfway through the process his brain catches up to what he’s doing, though he continues to let his body work the magic.

It’s more than the majority of miracles that he’s done throughout his long life. It’s involved and detailed. He and Raphael are inhabiting the same space and body and time. The incantations are built in and run through so quickly that once the angel has been healed they move onto the next and the next and the next. Healing and expending energy at rapid rates. 

Their robes are stained and a mixture of wet and stiff. There’s a certain smell around them that Crowley can pinpoint as the particular aroma of a battlefield, but crisper and almost sweeter. It makes bile rise in their throat. There are so many downed angels. There’s so much ethereal blood. So many cries, and so much pain. They don’t stop, they can’t, they won’t. 


	20. Ramifications

Time seems to really shift and bend then, going on forever and yet every movement passing quickly. At some point they get thrown slightly off sync. Where Raphael remains in a solid form as they work, Crowley becomes his shadow. A blurred and ghostly outline of himself. He’s a bit startled when he notices it at first. His outline is in his normal black clothing, which would have been a stark contrast to the white robes...if they were still white. As is, the deep red and black are unlikely compliments. 

Despite the brief shock of no longer being combined into one person, he doesn’t stop healing. The power doesn’t feel any different in these hands than it did in the angelic ones. It flows just as easily and strongly. Despite the growing wetness at his knees, tell tale that though hidden by the dark of the fabric, blood was soaking into his clothing in this form as well, there’s a lack of solidity to this double that makes his stomach pitch as though dropping quickly from a high point. They are still one, and yet two at the same time. 

At some point they start to get tired. Of course they do, they’re doing nearly non stop miracles of a high caliber. It’s more than even a bone deep exhaustion, reaching even into their true form and draining them completely. Even with that slow and building wariness, they don’t stop. They can’t, and they wouldn’t regardless. There are being that need their help, and if he could do anything about it, no matter who or what he was, he would do his damnedest to help. 

They continue their weary work until suddenly there’s no one and nothing left to work on. Everything around them has devolved back into nothingness, and empty white space only tainted by the pools of red at their feet. The blood is thick and heavy and their feet are sunk into it, the very tops of them just barely peek out, a stark pale against the deep crimson.

“What...where have they-?”

Raphael interrupts him, and Crowley mutely notes that his voice is now both louder and clearer than Crowley’s own. 

“We did what we could.”

“What do you mean we did what we could?” He nearly yells.

Raphael shakes his head calmly. “There was nothing more we could do.”

“Nothing-” Crowley balls his fists up by his sides. “We were a healer-”

“Are a healer-”

“And you’re just going to go, _ alright be we did our best _!?” Crowley can feel himself begin to shake. “They’re gone. Dead, and there’s just blood and pain and hurt and you don’t even ca-”

“You didn’t. The first time.” 

He stumbles over his words. “What?”

“You weren’t calm or okay. Not the first time. You were a lot like this. Different in some ways, but angry and sad nonetheless.” Raphael shifts and pulls away from him. Their bodies are stuck, strung together with a supernatural web of energy, but they’re able to separate enough that green eyes turn on him. “This is the second time I’ve been through it physically, and I’ve never forgotten it. I can’t forget it.”

Crowley shrinks back from the intensity of the stare bearing down on him. It’s not just a stare, it’s deeper than that. More like looking into his soul, looking in him and past him at the same time. 

“I’ve had time of sorts to process it. You’re having to do that all over again.”

Crowley shakes his head, but he can’t pull his own eyes away. There’s a vice-like pressure all around his head. A stinging heat behind his eyes. 

Raphael takes a step back towards him and the pressure eases slightly. 

“It’s alright...It is devastating, and you can feel it all now. Everything you used to and everything you could as a demon. The love, the hate, the fear, the anguish, the pain, the pleasure. Everything.”

“Please stop talking. I can’t. I -” Crowley sucks in a sharp breath through his teeth as Raphael steps back into him and their bodies sync back up into each other again. There’s still a slight shadow, an almost delay between the two of them, but for some reason their re-combination sends a soothing wave of calm over him. 

“I wish I could give you more room.” Raphael says softly. “But we have to move on. We can’t stay here.” 

He want’s to say something. Wants to be angry again, wants to say that they have to stay or go back and fix things. Do better. He’s just lost all of his fight, and is left with a bereft empty space as he settles into the passenger seat of the body he had been driving earlier. It’s a disjointed floating feeling.

“Don’t worry. All that shouldn’t last too long. I just didn’t want you to be hurting.” Now that Raphael’s voice is the more solid one, it sounds more real, more expressive, and it’s the first time that Crowley has heard any sort of emotion bleed in. Raphael sounds uncomfortable, and a bit nervous. 

Crowley lets out a humming noise and they both straighten up a bit at the odd way the resonance runs through them. 

“Let’s go then.” Crowley encourages quietly.

“Right, yes.” 

There’s another shift. This one is much more physically uncomfortable than the others. It pulls at their shin and pushes the air out of them. Raphael braces them firmly as things begin to reform around them, and that’s when Crowley finally thinks about what could possibly be next. 

“This isn’t-”

Raphael swallows thickly. “Don’t think too much.”

“You sound scared.” Crowley hates it. Since the beginning this angel has been nearly emotionless. Steely and confident and sure. Hearing the beginnings of something that seems so much like himself sends waves of unease through him. A bone deep thing that makes him rare back, though he can’t actually move much anymore. The energy glue holding them together is not stretching like it did before.

“I’m not scared.”

“You’re lying.”

Raphael bites down on his tongue anxiously, and Crowley didn’t realise that he’d ever done that before his fangs became a thing. 

“Well I’m not looking forward to it.”

“Why are you so different now?” He hadn’t really meant to ask it, not aloud anyway, and it does make Raphael stumble a bit as he walks. 

“Different.”

“You’re more-”

“Real?”

“...yeah.”

“We’re reliving the worst part of my life, in my body, and I know exactly what’s going to happen and can do nothing about it.” Raphael shakes his head. “We’re together, combined. You had my...humanity I suppose is the best way to put it. Now we both have it.” There’s a short pause as the whiteness on the horizon changes to a dull light and starts to form into something more solid. “I wouldn’t mind if you took it back.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this chapter took so long to get out!  
Aside from life just happening, I did write this a couple of times and was unhappy with it before getting to this point.  
Thanks for being patient, and I hope you enjoy!

**Author's Note:**

> If there's any interest- There's some cosplay of Crowley's angel form and will likely do more. If anyone is interested in it let me know and I can add in some links? Maybe?
> 
> Edit: I'll add in some pics or art of the above soon!
> 
> -Castor


End file.
